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FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 




FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 
1856-I915 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 
a Memorial Volume 



BEING ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT THE FU- 
NERAL OF FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR, CEDRON, 
INDIAN QUEEN LANE, GERMANTOWN, PHILA- 
DELPHIA, PA., MARCH 24, 1915; AT A MEMORIAL 
MEETING HELD UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 
SOCIETY TO PROMOTE THE SCIENCE OF MANAGE- 
MENT (NOW TAYLOR SOCIETY), UNIVERSITY OF 
PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA, PA., OCTOBER 22, 
1915; AND AT MR. TAYLOR'S HOME " BOXLY," 
CHESTNUT HILL, PHILADELPHIA, PA., OCTOBER 
23> 1915- 




TAYLOR SOCIETY 

ENGINEERING SOCIETIES BUILDING 

29 W. THIRTY-NINTH STREET 

NEW YORK 






COPYRIGHT, 1920 
BY THE TAYLOR SOCIETY 



THE PLIMPTON PRESS 
NORWOOD'MASS'U'S'A 



JAN IB m\ 

©CU605440 



■s 



•• 



OF this book there has been printed an edition 
of one hundred copies, of which this copy is 
No. . K. . In accordance with the primary pur- 
pose of the publication, fifty copies have been de- 
posited in the principal public libraries and 
libraries of engineering societies of the United 
States and of foreign countries. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Addresses at Mr. Taylor's Funeral, Germantown, 
Philadelphia, Pa., March 24, 191 5 

James M. Dodge, Philadelphia 3 

Morris L. Cooke, Philadelphia 5 

Addresses at Memorial Meeting, Philadelphia, Pa., 

October 22, 191 5 9 

Program of Memorial Meeting — Speakers — Honor- 
ary Vice-Presidents 10 

Harlow S. Person, President of the Society to Pro- 
mote the Science of Management 11 

Rudolph Blankenburg, Mayor of Philadelphia . . 13 

Henri LeChatelier, Institute of France 16 

(Read by Col. Vignal, Military Attache of French Embassy) \ 

Charles de Freminville, Paris 25 

(Read by Mayor Blankenburg) 

A. Wallichs, Royal Polytechnic School, Aix-la- 

Chapelle 39 

(Read by Mayor Blankenburg) 

J. J. Sederholm, University of Helsingfors, Finland 52 
(Read by President Person) 

Carl G. Barth, Philadelphia 56 

Henry L. Gantt, New York 61 

Sanford E. Thompson Boston 66 

Louis D. Brandeis, Boston 72 

James M. Dodge, Philadelphia 77 

vii 



Vlll CONTENTS 

Addresses at "Boxly," Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia 

October 23, 191 5 79 

Admiral Caspar F. Goodrich, Pomfret, Conn. 81 

Harold Van Du Zee, Germantown, Pa 87 

Letter from William A. Fannon, Appleton, Wis. 98 
Memorial Resolution of the Society to Pro- 
mote the Science of Management to Mrs. 

Taylor m 

Benediction at Mr. Taylor's Grave, West Laurel 

Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pa., October 23, 1915 113 
Rev. Langdon C. Stewardson, Greenwich, Conn. 115 



ADDRESSES 

AT MR. TAYLOR'S FUNERAL, CEDRON, INDIAN 
QUEEN LANE, GERMANTOWN, PHILA- 
DELPHIA, PA., MARCH 24, 1915 



BY JAMES MAPES DODGE 

FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR was a 
prophet with honor in his own country and, 
at the same time, honored and respected in 
every civilized country of the globe. He was a 
devoted husband and faithful friend, modest and 
considerate; he was a remarkable student, an in- 
ventor of the first rank and an engineer of resource 
and keen perception, indefatigable in his work and 
unswerving in his devotion to truth. With a re- 
markable combination of temperament and learn- 
ing he became the bearer of a message that is 
destined to make him recognized the world over 
as the emancipator of the worker and of the em- 
ployer. He delivered the worker from the oppres- 
sive burdens of the old order and gave him freedom 
to win the best for his family and himself. He de- 
livered the employer from the necessity of being only 
a task-master and gave him the opportunity to be the 
friend and co-worker of those associated with him. 

Through his scientific investigations of the rela- 
tions between employer and employee he was able 
to formulate a system which made it possible for 
both parties to realize that their interests instead 
of being in irreconcilable conflict were identical and 
that they were interdependent, and that all ques- 
tions between them could be settled by kindness, 
forbearance, and patient investigation without resort 



4 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

to mistrust, suspicion, or antagonism. He was the 
bearer of the only flag of truce that was ever carried 
upon the battlefield of industrial strife. Ignorance 
and prejudice have fired upon this flag, but it was 
never lowered, and now that the hand that carried 
it must relinquish its noble office, thousands of 
others will sustain it in its exalted position, and I 
predict that it will never be lowered and that the 
employer and the employee will both prosper under 
it as they have never prospered before, and with 
increasing respect, regard, and solicitude for each 
other's welfare. 

Many others have prayed for an industrial social 
millennium, expecting it to come from spiritual 
grace through lapse of time, but Dr. Taylor not only 
saw the possibilities of the future, but he did more: 
he told in detail exactly how this long-hoped-for 
condition might be actually accomplished at once. 
The seed he has sown is springing up in thousands 
of places; the message he gave us is making hun- 
dreds, yes, even thousands of converts; the work 
he so ably started, being based upon eternal truth, 
will partake of the lasting characteristics of its 
foundation. 



BY MORRIS LLEWELLYN COOKE 

SO much stress has been put upon the practical 
accomplishments of Frederick W. Taylor that 
the great reach and sweep of his spirit has, 
except for the few, been almost submerged. All 
his lifetime of patient, tireless investigation; all 
the acuteness of his highly scientific mind; all the 
aspirations of a sensitive nature, were bent on the 
one end — of making human life a better thing to 
live. To this object he made the freest possible 
sacrifice of his fortune, his time, and his health. 

The strength of the great movement which Mr. 
Taylor originated lay very largely in the devotion 
which we in the ranks felt for our leader. We rarely 
thought to call him a great man — it seemed like 
such a surface observation to anyone who ever saw 
him at work. But we were always conscious of his 
incessant struggle — of the long weary years of 
battling to make men have faith in themselves. 

He had a wonderful capacity for friendliness — a 
capacity that could stretch across seven seas, and 
last a lifetime, and reach the lowest man in the 
ranks. He taught us our mutual dependence and 
then proceeded to carry nearly all the load. He 
tinged all our work with ideality. Hear his own 
words, "I can no longer afford to work for money"; 
"All our inventions and changes are made to pro- 
duce human happiness;" "In all your relations, do 



6 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

to the other fellow what you would have him do 
to you/' Just a year ago, Father Sertilanges, 
preaching in Paris, said: "The love of God is the 
Taylor System of our inner life (Pamour de Dieu est 
le systeme Taylor de notre vie interieure)." Mr. 
Taylor made us feel that there is nothing we cannot 
accomplish — and this without hurting our fellow- 
men. 

Those of us who are gathered here this afternoon 
are only representative of a large army of men and 
women to whom the principles of Scientific Man- 
agement as practiced and taught by Mr. Taylor 
have made a compelling appeal. In every part of 
the world — in the mines of Mozambique, in far-off 
Japan, and among each of the contending armies on 
the Continent, and all over this country — were 
those who called him "Master." Standing beside 
the body of our fallen leader, I wish I could convey 
even the slightest suggestion of what his inspiration 
has been to his followers and what a calamity has 
come to them — as to the world — in his death. I 
wish that to you and through you who are here I 
could issue a call that would seal the solidarity of 
this movement for the bettering of human relations 
in business and industry, for which Mr. Taylor gave 
his life. 

If we could only lose ourselves as he lost himself 
in his love of humanity! If we could only have the 
supreme confidence in the final outcome which he 
never lost! If we could only care as little as he 
cared about being numbered with the crowd, when 
the crowd was wrong! And above all, if we could 
only act as if we believed that industry and national 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR J 

prosperity and life itself are complicated problems, 
not to be solved by any easy formulas, but worthy 
of the closest scientific scrutiny, the most patient 
and untiring investigations, the highest ideality 
that the human mind and spirit can bring to bear 
upon them! This is the glory of Frederick W. 
Taylor's life and this is the heritage he leaves for 
those who believed in him — who followed him — 
who loved him. 

It was a part of the greatness of Mr. Taylor that 
he was not altogether concerned about the world's 
understanding of the greatness of his principles and 
motives. His loyal friends would do well to keep 
in mind his own words: "Patience, patience, and 
then more patience." His ideas forged ahead pri- 
marily because they were true and because they 
fitted in with the spirit of the time. But Taylor's 
"hanging on with his teeth," as he expressed it, 
and his willingness to stand alone when he was 
right, made them prevail. 

Clean cut in his vision and keen in his judgment, 
fearless of criticism or misunderstanding, Frederick 
W. Taylor rang true in every act. He thought 
straight and spoke his mind with no uncertain 
sound and his speaking cleared the air of sophis- 
tries and evasions. No man who was ever honored 
by his friendship, sustained by his counsel, upheld 
by his invincible spirit, can ever willingly set him- 
self an easy task or be unwilling to tread the 
difficult way — so it be straight and clear. 

Perhaps it is true that this great pioneer in a 
search for fundamental laws underlying human re- 
lations in industry had to die before the world 



8 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

could grasp and appropriate the spiritual signifi- 
cance of his ideas. But let us never for a moment 
think of his genius as resting from its labors. The 
torch he kindled he has passed on to other hands to 
carry forward in the world of men. But it is impos- 
sible not to believe that already his eager curiosity, 
his undimmed mentality, his splendid enthusiasm, 
are engaged in a new and spiritual adventure, for 
which his training and discipline were a fitting prepa- 
ration. No more baffled by human limitations 
within and without, his passionate search for truth 
given a universal field and scope, his horizon bounded 
only by the stars, Frederick W. Taylor will always 
lead us by the inspiration of his continuing life, the 
comradeship of his undying spirit. 

"Bid him awake from the dream, the probation, the prelude, 
to find himself set 
Clear and safe in new light and new life — a new harmony 

yet 
To be run, and continued, and ended — 
Who knows?" 



ADDRESSES 

AT THE MEMORIAL MEETING, HOUSTON HALL, 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 

PHILADELPHIA, PA., 

OCTOBER 22, 191 5 



The Officers and Members 

of 

The Society to Promote the Science of Management 

request your presence 

at a meeting to be held in memory of 

Frederick Winslow Taylor 

on Friday evening, October twenty -second 

at eight o'clock 

Houston Hall, University of Pennsylvania 

Speakers 

Rudolph Blankenburg Edgar Fahs Smith 

Mayor of Philadelphia Provost of University of Penna. 

Carl G. Barth Henry L. Gantt 

Louis D. Brandeis Harlow S. Person 

James M. Dodge Sanford E. Thompson 

Honorary Vice Presidents 

Clarence M. Clark Henri le Chatelier 

Morris L. Cooke Wilfred Lewis 

William Crozier, U.S.A. R. Poliakoff 

Edwin F. Gay Hans Renold 

C. F. Goodrich, U.S.N. Ida M. Tarbell 

H. K. Hathaway Sanford E. Thompson 

Y. Hoshino Henry R. Towne 

Toro Ishiki A. Wallichs 



BY HARLOW STAFFORD PERSON 

Mr. Provost: 

ON behalf of the Society to Promote the 
Science of Management 1 I thank you for 
this welcome, and through you the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania for its cordial hospitality. 
It is peculiarly fitting that the Society should hold 
this memorial meeting in this environment, — in 
Pennsylvania, in the city of Philadelphia, under the 
roof of a great university. In this state, because 
within its borders Mr. Taylor saw his great problem, 
and through nearly half a century devoted himself 
to its solution. In this city, because here he later 
made his home, and here his body rests. In this 
city, furthermore, because into its records have 
been indelibly written, that all may read, the most 
perfect application of his philosophy of manage- 
ment to efficient municipal administration. Under 
the roof of a great university, because in purpose, 
in method, in temperament, he represented all for 
which a university stands. He was investigator 
and seeker after truth; he was discoverer and for- 
mulator of truth; he was jealous guardian of truth; 
he was teacher and leader of men. 

Because of the prejudice developed by their en- 
vironment, educators in estimating men like to test 

1 [Now named Taylor Society, in honor of Frederick 
Winslow Taylor. — EdJ 



12 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

them for these characteristics. It is a joy to have 
found them in Mr. Taylor. That is the source of 
the inspiration which has prompted educators to 
associate ourselves with this Society for the purpose 
of preserving and developing the principles dis- 
covered by him, and for the purpose of convincing 
every man of their fundamental soundness and value 
to society. As an investigative and educational 
personality this Society is a lineal descendant of 
Mr. Taylor, investigator and educator. 

Mr. Taylor embodied the highest ideals of the 
most exacting university, — an unquenchable pas- 
sion to learn the truth; an indefatigable energy 
and persistence in the search for it; a command of 
the essential intellectual and physical apparatus of 
investigation; an imagination which penetrated the 
darkness ahead; and a modesty which forbade the 
common sin of premature announcement of results. 

It was a quarter of a century after Mr. Taylor 
first conceived the first principles of his philosophy 
of management before he announced them in the 
memorable address before the American Society of 
Mechanical Engineers. To some of us, one of the 
most heroic acts in the history of science was Charles 
Darwin's modesty and patience in long and quiet 
investigation which preceded the announcement of 
epoch-making discoveries. The story of it thrills 
us. Likewise we are thrilled when we realize that 
we have been associated with and now continue the 
work of a man who has shown a similar example 
of supreme modesty and patience. 

Again, Mr. Provost, on behalf of the Society, I 
thank you and the University for its cordial welcome. 



BY RUDOLPH BLANKENBURG 
MAYOR OF PHILADELPHIA 

THE greatest tribute I can perhaps pay to 
the memory of Mr. Taylor is to advise you 
that soon after my election as Mayor of 
Philadelphia, four years ago, I requested him to call 
upon me. He did so, and at my house we discussed 
all phases of city government and what would best 
serve the City of Philadelphia during the new 
administration. 

After fully discussing this important question, I 
asked him to make a great sacrifice for the public 
by accepting the position of Director of the Depart- 
ment of Public Works. He seemed pleased, but hes- 
itated, stating that he did not see how he could do 
so. When I saw him again, a day or two later, he 
said, "It would be a real pleasure for me to accept 
your offer so as to help you in the great work of 
regenerating Philadelphia, but it is impossible for 
me to do so on account of my health. I have really 
more to do now than should be asked of any man, 
and it is a physical impossibility for me to add to 
my work." 

But Mr. Taylor helped me after all. When I 
looked further for a man to fill the important posi- 
tion of Director of Public Works, Mr. Taylor helped 
me in the selection and recommended to me one of 



14 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

his disciples. I appointed that disciple as Director, 
and he has made good and is an honor to the City 
of Philadelphia. 

Mr. Taylor was to me a paradox. On one hand 
we find his rugged intellect blasting its way up 
through layer after layer of conventions formed by 
generations of prejudice, tradition, and ignorance 
until he became recognized as perhaps the world's 
foremost industrial leader. When truth was at 
stake, he was resourceful, robust, and tireless. The 
problem once even dimly visioned he pursued with 
the zest of a hunter until he conquered. 

On the other hand, those whose contacts with 
him were, like my own, only casual and who went 
to him as converts, rather than to be converted, 
could hardly sense his power. He was born and 
bred to a gentle manner. His sweet smile and 
courtly bearing were only the surface indications 
of an innate and broad-spreading sympathy and 
kindliness. He knew he had much to give and he 
gave it with a generosity which knew no limits. 
Yet few men of this or any other time had sensed 
so clearly how much there is to be known and what 
a short way we have gone on the journey. 

We in Philadelphia who saw Mr. Taylor come 
and go among us as our friend and neighbor only 
dimly comprehend — if at all — that the world has 
been listening to his teachings for years as to one 
of the master minds of his time. The Japanese, 
the French, and those of Scandinavian lands were 
among the peoples who have read his books in their 
own tongues for years. The industrial scientists of 
Germany, Italy, and Russia have crossed the sea 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 15 

with the beautiful home of Boxly as the end of their 
pilgrimage. 

Today his fellow-townsmen are alive to the sig- 
nificance of his mission, and an eagerness to ac- 
quaint ourselves with his methods and principles 
is springing up in all our hearts. 1 

This war-torn world of ours has indeed lost a 
great leader at a time when it needs him most. 
It would seem that when the moment comes to 
bind up humanity's wounds, the creed which Mr. 
Taylor lived and died to establish may prove one 
rock on which we may build a more lasting peace. 

The City of Philadelphia is indeed proud of his 
genius and even more proud of the great service he 
rendered to mankind. 

While we may some day erect monuments in 
marble or bronze to his memory, Frederick Winslow 
Taylor has erected for himself, in the city of his 
birth, an imperishable memorial in the great work 
which he has woven into the fabric of our institutions. 

1 Mayor Blankenburg then read abstracts from papers 
sent for the occasion by Mr. Charles Freminville of Paris, 
France, and Professor A. Wallichs of the Royal Polytechnic 
School of Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany, both of which are printed 
in full in these proceedings. 



HOW HAVE I KNOWN FREDERICK W. 
TAYLOR; WHY HAVE I ENDEAVORED TO 
POPULARIZE SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT? 1 

BY HENRI LE CHATELIER 

FREDERICK W. TAYLOR is a mechanician 
and I am a chemist: he is an engineer, and I 
am a professor. What has brought us in 
touch with each other? How have I been led to 
undertake the popularizing of industrial methods, 
which is quite outside of my province? Some will 
say it is chance, — the veriest accident. But, in 
the Taylor System there is no room for chance; 
all facts are necessarily related to each other. The 
very object of this system is to disentangle the in- 
evitable relations of phenomena. Chance has to do 
only with those relations of which we are still igno- 
rant. The questions which I raise here give very 
clear proof of the correctness of this definition of 
chance. If the bringing together, across the Atlantic 
Ocean, of two scholars entirely unknown to each other 
seems at first sight inexplicable, the following state- 
ment will demonstrate, on the contrary, that it was 
inevitable and that chance had nothing to do with it. 
I have devoted my life to the study of science, 
and in pursuit of this study I have allowed myself 

1 Read by Col. Vignol, Military Attache of the French 
Embassy, and special delegate to the memorial meeting by 
appointment of the President of France. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 17 

to be guided by a few leading principles borrowed 
from the philosophical works of Taine. To my mind 
the end of science is simply the study of the relations 
existing between phenomena; that is to say, the 
study of natural laws. Moreover, a sound method 
for the study of these laws consists in at once direct- 
ing all one's efforts toward the analysis of the most 
important factors; that is, of those which play a pre- 
ponderant part in the determination of a given result. 

Being, moreover, a professor in a polytechnic school, 
I naturally had to interest myself from the very 
first in the elements of industrial progress; in my 
opinion science is the dominating factor therein. In 
order to develop the influence of science in French 
industry, and to make our engineers understand the 
beneficial role of scientific methods of work, I es- 
tablished La Revue de Metallurgie about fifteen 
years ago. In this publication I proposed to give 
a leading place to the studies of industrial science, 
while giving ample space to purely technical in- 
formation, which was necessary to insure the read- 
ing of my review by those manufacturers who are 
often but partially convinced of the practical value 
of science. 

Faithful to these principles, in editing this review 
I was obliged systematically to give a conspicuous 
place to the dominating facts, — to allot the number 
of pages devoted to each industrial process, accord- 
ing to its real importance. At the time of the Paris 
Exposition in 1900, struck by the evident impor- 
tance of high-speed tool steel, I reviewed system- 
atically all the articles bearing on this discovery 
in order to give extracts from them in La Revue 



15 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

de Metallurgie. I published among other things 
an extract from a lecture of a Sheffield engineer, 
Mr. Gledhill, attributing the discovery of high-speed 
tool steel to a lucky chance. A careless workman 
had overheated one of his tools and, far from dam- 
aging it, he had considerably improved it. This 
incident coming to the knowledge of two industrial 
engineers, Messrs. Taylor and White, had given 
birth to high-speed tool steel. Not believing in 
chance, I had followed up this article with some 
personal remarks, saying that it had certainly re- 
quired a high order of scientific observation and 
investigation on the part of the engineers in ques- 
tion to have been able to draw such an important 
discovery from the carelessness of a workman. 
This article fell under the eye of Frederick Taylor. 
Some months afterwards when he decided to pub- 
lish the history of his discovery in his celebrated 
presidential address to the mechanical engineers, 
"The Art of Cutting Metals," he sent me a copy of 
the final proofs, thanking me for my words of appre- 
ciation. It might interest me, he said, to know 
that chance, as I had foreseen, had had absolutely 
nothing to do in the discovery of high-speed tool 
steel. 

I then asked Mr. Taylor to authorize my publish- 
ing a French translation of his paper, which he very 
obligingly granted. But, he added in his letter, he 
believed that he had done something much more 
important than his work on cutting metals, namely, 
his scientific management of shop work. He asked 
me to read attentively his paper called "Shop 
Management" and to give him my criticism of it. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 19 

I knew the work in question very well by name, but 
I thought that it treated simply of a system of pay- 
ing wages, the differential system, more or less 
similar to Halsley's system of premiums, which had 
not seemed to me sufficiently interesting to make 
me buy the book and read it. Once in possession 
of this volume, I studied it conscientiously and I 
was profoundly surprised to find in it a very remark- 
able application of the scientific method to industrial 
problems. In undertaking the publication of La 
Revue de Metallurgies I had proposed to generalize 
the applications of science to industry, but I had 
not understood the full extent of the domain of 
science. I had hardly dreamed beyond the intro- 
duction of the laboratory and of its experimental 
methods in factories, but I had not foreseen the 
possibility of extending the domain of science over 
all the realm of industry, including questions of 
organization, commercial questions, labor questions, 
etc. 

I was somewhat ashamed to find the science of a 
practical man infinitely more developed (elevee) than 
my own. From that day on I felt myself obliged, 
in order to remain faithful to the program which I 
had from the first mapped out for myself, to con- 
stitute myself an apostle of the Taylor System. 
From the beginning I was perfectly aware of the 
difficulties and of the time which the spread of the 
new ideas would require. It had already been hard 
enough to induce manufacturers to make use of 
laboratories, even when the material results were 
tangible and paid immediately. It would be still 
more difficult to make them accept a more complex 



20 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

method of work, more costly to put in operation and, 
above all, giving only more remote results. Calling 
to mind, then, this other principle of Taine, that to 
convince people it is not sufficient to give them good 
reasons, but that above all you must fire their imagi- 
nations by a series of individual facts which they 
can easily digest and which all lead to the same end, 
I made up my mind, either in La Revue de Metal- 
lurgie or in other publications, to come back in- 
cessantly to the advantages of Taylor's Scientific 
Management. A nail is finally driven home by the 
constant repetition of little blows. It was in this 
way that an active correspondence with Frederick 
Taylor was brought about and the beginning of 
those sentiments of friendship arose which made 
his premature death particularly painful to me. We 
shall endeavor at least to make his ideas live and 
to awaken the feeling of gratitude to which he is 
entitled because of the beneficent work he left 
behind him. 

After all, the bond which inevitably drew us to- 
gether was the community of our scientific interests, 
directed alike toward industrial progress. We have, 
independently and without any acquaintance, come 
upon each other from different routes which led to 
the same end: we had to meet sooner or later. 
There was indeed no accident in the origin of our 
collaboration. 

Now, what has the result been, as far as France 
is concerned, of the efforts made to spread the 
Taylor System? It has been nothing, if one judges 
by appearances. There is not to my knowledge 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 21 

a single one of our factories which has been entirely 
reorganized by the inspiration of the principles of 
scientific management. I know only half a dozen 
where partial applications have been attempted. 
Among these, the St. Jacques Factory at Monlucon, 
a branch of the Company of Chatillon, Commentry 
and Neuves House, is the most remarkable example 
to cite. This factory is directed by Mr. Charpy, 
an expert, and a correspondent of the Academy of 
Sciences, who had already begun to introduce scien- 
tific methods of work in his factories before he knew 
of Frederick Taylor's publications, which only en- 
couraged him to persevere in the path in which he 
had been walking. On the other hand, there has 
certainly been brought about a widespread stimu- 
lation of ideas in the industrial world; I know of it 
by the many letters that I have received. More- 
over, it is possible to give even more direct proof of 
this. The French translation of the "Principles of 
Scientific Management," has been printed in two 
editions to the number of 8000 copies, of which 
3000 have been gratuitously distributed and 4000 
sold — representing, then, at least 5000 readers. 
To-day Frederick Taylor's ideas are familiar to the 
majority of French engineers: whether they will 
or no, these necessarily exercise an influence on every 
one of their decisions. But the name of Taylor is 
not spoken on that account, and it hardly ever will 
be, because his ideas can never be applied in our 
industry until they have passed into the spirit of 
other engineers and have become their very own. 

The advice of consulting engineers, which is con- 
sidered so natural in the United States, does not 



22 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

obtain with us. To reorganize a factory you appeal 
to one of Taylor's disciples — Barth, Gantt, Thomp- 
son, etc., or to one of their imitators. With us, on 
the contrary, a factory insists on reorganizing itself 
only with the help of its own staff, and on invoking 
no name except that of the firm. I had warned 
Frederick Taylor that in France his system would 
take the name of the engineers or the firms which 
would put his ideas into practice. "I desire noth- 
ing more," said he; "so that my ideas spread, it 
matters little the dress under which they cir- 
culate." 

If French engineers have studied the ideas of 
Frederick Taylor with interest and sympathy, it has 
not always been so with workmen and especially 
with labor unions. However, their opposition has 
been less active than one would have feared and 
especially it has generally been half-hearted. The 
greatest difficulties on the part of workmen came 
about because certain shops, in spite of the explicit 
recommendations of Frederick Taylor, chose to 
apply only a few of the principles of Scientific 
Management, selecting those which seemed to them 
the most advantageous. 

I have had in my own hands letters from working- 
men complaining very justly that they had been 
forced to increase the speed in running their machine 
tools, receiving the bonus promised by Taylor — 
but that the precautions had been neglected which 
were necessary to insure an increased supply of 
materials commensurate with the increase of the 
production of the machines. They were thus forced 
to lie idle from time to time, for an hour or more, 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 23 

and in spite of the higher wages per hour, they did 
not make any more per day than they had before. 

The statements about the Taylor System issued 
by the leaders of the labor unions have disagreed 
considerably — some of them have frankly taken 
the defensive, as has Founiere, in a series of articles 
published in the Depeche de Toulouse. Others have 
declared that the Taylor System was excellent in 
itself, and that there would be no objection to it, 
if the employers were not brigands and did not 
attempt to use this method as a weapon against the 
workingman. Finally, some of them, like Puget, 
have shown themselves to be decidedly antagonistic 
to new methods of work, but, in order to combat 
them, they have used arguments in absolute bad 
faith. For example, they cited an alleged quota- 
tion of an English journalist named Frazer, making 
him say in his book "America at Work," that all 
workingmen working under scientific management 
reached the cemetery before coming of age. Now 
there is nothing of the kind in the volume in ques- 
tion. Frazer does not mention anywhere the scien- 
tific method of Mr. Taylor, the existence of which he 
does not suspect. His invective is aimed at a large 
manufacturing plant in Philadelphia whose prin- 
ciples of administration are really the very negative 
of those of scientific management. In this shop the 
rule is to choose for each operation the most capable 
man, and then to let him do the best he can, without 
tying him down to any principle of management. 
In France, the most earnest opponents of the Taylor 
System are perhaps the economists. That may seem 
surprising, but on second thought one understands 



24 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

why scholars discussing industrial questions which 
are altogether out of their province, without ever 
having set foot in a machine shop, must in the nature 
of things conform their ideas in their criticisms to 
previous opinions and to systems established by 
long tradition. They do not dare to launch out into 
new fields whose foundations they are not able 
personally to appreciate. Be that as it may, Fred- 
erick Taylor's ideas are making their way little by 
little. Machinery was forced upon industry in 
spite of the attacks of which it was the object; it 
will be the same with the scientific principles of 
management of work. From certain points of view 
their success would be even easier, because ideas 
have a far greater force of penetration and of dif- 
fusion than material objects. One can break up 
machinery, burn down shops, but there is no way of 
coercing ideas. 



THE RESPONSE OF FRANCE TO 
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 

BY CHARLES DE FREMINVILLE 

THE associates of Frederick Winslow Taylor, 
gathered together to perpetuate his memory, 
have, in asking me to present a few remarks 
on the work of their master, conferred on me a great 
honor, to which I had no right to aspire. 

I shall endeavor, however, to invoke the upright- 
ness, the energy, and the elevation of character of 
the eminent man who gave me such a cordial wel- 
come. At the same time I wish to point out, from 
the point of view of the engineer, how Frederick W. 
Taylor's ideas were presented in France; with what 
sympathetic interest they were received; and how 
great a service they are called upon to render to the 
French. Those ideas acquaint them at the most 
opportune moment with a method of organization 
which appeals to them more than any other, because, 
depending, in spite of what has been said, on the 
development of the individual, it responds perfectly 
to their own aspirations. 

When Frederick Taylor's works "On the Art of 
Cutting Metals" and "Shop Management" ap- 
peared, they attracted the particular attention of a 
learned engineer whose name is universally recog- 
nized, M. Henri le Chatelier, because they repre- 
sented the most remarkable application of the 



26 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

scientific method to industrial work, and the finest 
development of that industrial science towards 
which M. le Chatelier himself was already striving 
to lead the way. Through his interest these im- 
portant works were first published by La Revue 
de Metallurgie. 

The method used involved such determination 
and continuity of effort, such close cooperation for 
an unprecedented length of time, and laws carried 
out to such a fine point, that it was difficult to think 
it was not exaggerated. 

But from the moment I heard of this great work 
it was easy for me to recognize in it the development 
of those experiments in the cutting of metals which 
had been pointed out to me at the time of a visit to 
the shops of William Sellers in 1885 and which could 
not have been published until a much later date. 
I was able then to bear my humble witness to the 
work of Frederick Taylor. 

Nevertheless, when the works of Frederick Taylor 
were published in France, the name of the great 
engineer must have already been known there, for 
it was that of one of the inventors of the high-speed 
tool steel which had made such a great sensation at 
the Paris Exposition in 1900. Everyone knew then 
that this great discovery was the result of the sci- 
entifically exact experiments conducted right in the 
shops with remarkable method and perseverance by 
Frederick Taylor and his associates. Such a dem- 
onstration could not pass unnoticed. Not only did 
Taylor reveal himself as an observer beyond the 
ordinary — but he taught others how to observe; 
he showed the extent of the field which opens up 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 27 

before trained observation and he should be recog- 
nized, without argument, as the head of a new School 
of Observation. 

"On the Art of Cutting Metals" had been pub- 
lished with "Shop Management" by M. le Chate- 
lier. The volume passed from hand to hand, and 
after having commanded the attention of manufac- 
turers, of the directors of railroad companies, etc., 
it reached the managers of the shops and the fore- 
men, who were struck by the practical advice, based 
on a profound knowledge of the world of labor, which 
they met in every line. 

From that moment Frederick Taylor acquired in 
France the right of citizenship, and the assimila- 
tion of his ideas and of his method was only a 
question of time. 

If Frederick Taylor had awakened the interest of 
experts by the application he had made of the scien- 
tific method, the manufacturers and their associates 
had recognized a master in him and did not allow 
him to be reduced again to the rank of the inventor 
of a system of industrial control. 

It may be said that the French, thereby following 
their natural bent and conforming to their traditions, 
will be more and more drawn to Frederick Taylor's 
ideas because of the ideal that inspires them and 
of the fact that Mr. Taylor, in showing how the 
scientific method can be made accessible and put 
within reach of a great many fellow laborers for 
the development of a vast and fertile field, re- 
sponds to a very real need in the French character. 

"Method" has long been honored in France. It 
characterizes the spirit which the great technical 



28 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

schools endeavor to inculcate in their pupils and 
which has contributed not a little to their ability 
to occupy an extremely important place in industry. 
It is the men who have gone out from these schools 
who have, for more than a century, superintended 
the building of the scientifically planned bridges 
which are found everywhere spanning the rivers of 
France. The discoveries or applications of science, 
made by their successors, do not count more. It is 
useless to enumerate them here — for America, 
which does not have to borrow any laurels from 
others, is the country in which one most often hears 
homage rendered to the discoveries of French 
science. Suffice it to say that it is thanks to these 
men that the French railroads were able a year ago 
to accomplish the mobilization of troops with a 
precision which so much astonished Americans. It 
is to them that France owes her artillery; and it is 
the spirit of "method" with which they are imbued 
which has put them at the head of our armies. If 
the pupils of these schools have occasionally brought 
upon themselves the reproach of wishing to intro- 
duce " method," with its uncompromising exactitude 
into a realm which, some assert, does not admit of 
its application and which they designate by the 
name of " practice," it is because they themselves 
have not had sufficient faith in " method " to pursue 
the application to its logical conclusion. 

These men are the first to admit this and to ac- 
knowledge that Mr. Taylor, in developing "method" 
in industrial operations much farther than anyone 
had dared to conceive of doing before, has estab- 
lished "the missing link" for which they sought. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 20, 

They do not see a "system" in Frederick Taylor's 
work (although it is generally so designated in 
France) but a remarkable extension of the applica- 
tion of " method." 

The French workman himself was not the last 
to understand how Taylor obtained such astound- 
ing results in the working of metals. Long since 
accustomed to associate the names of scholars with 
great industrial discoveries, he willingly accords to 
them the admiration and respect due to extraordi- 
nary men, and frequently experiences a lively desire 
to contribute, however little it may be, to their 
work. "Never mind," he has said more than once 
to himself, after having applied himself very methodi- 
cally to his task, "I have done a little like Taylor." 
So it is not surprising that the seekers after prece- 
dents have explored France with the greatest care, 
in the hope of finding the germ of Mr. Taylor's 
ideas there. But they have been obliged to admit 
that they found themselves in the presence of a 
new work. If they happened to discover that some 
of the finest geniuses of French mechanics, such as 
Belidor, Vauban, Coulomb, had paused for a few 
moments to analyze the motions of the workman 
and had left a few notes on the subject, there was 
still no connection between these notes and the 
labors of Frederick Taylor. Not only were these 
labors not minimized b)f these great men, but they 
received brilliant tributes from them. 

Frederick Taylor is not, however, content with 
teaching how to observe: he wishes to show how to 
act. He proves that most industrial tasks involve 
incredible losses of energy, — that they are not co- 



30 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

ordinated, except by altogether insufficient plans 
for them as a whole. The workman is not trained: 
he is not directed: his work results in goods of such 
varying quality as to be unworthy of the time in 
which we live. 

Routine rules supreme in the shop. It often 
engenders systematic loafing and, at other times, 
overwork. Order must be installed, and to that end 
fixed rules for the management of the work must be 
adopted, from the top to the bottom of the scale. 
This is what one cannot get people to admit, with- 
out the greatest difficulty. Moreover all organiza- 
tion which assures the effective cooperation of the 
separate elements contributing to management is 
often sufficient to insure the success of a business. 
Minute study of the motions executed during a 
task in itself makes it possible to perfect the habits 
which constitute the power of the workman. And 
the breaking up of the work into elements easily 
grouped together is the only way to establish a fair 
price for this task, leaving no room for any errors 
by either party. These elements of work have 
been very properly compared, by one of Mr. Taylor's 
associates, to the letters of our phonetic alphabet. 
Why not make use of them, instead of continuing to 
try to make estimates which are completely lack- 
ing in exactness, and which may be likened to the 
endless symbolic characters of the Chinese? 

It has been said that many people would rather 
die than pause one moment in their work to re- 
flect on what they are doing. How many others 
uselessly waste their precious time and strength 
constantly reinventing what they ought to have 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 31 

learned once and for all? A man rarely takes the 
trouble to notice what is under his eye; not even 
what is pointed out to him. The simplest observa- 
tion, such as is apparently within reach of everybody, 
has little attraction for him. He is continually 
asking himself why all that he sees is not better 
done, and his one idea is to improve everything. So 
there were not lacking innovators anxious to make 
use of the work of Frederick Taylor in improving 
things. They found themselves face to face with 
a man who had a horror of compromise and was un- 
willing to distort the principles which he had enun- 
ciated. Above all did Taylor consider that it was a 
waste of time to formulate elementary principles 
already established. A professor does not ask his 
pupils constantly to reaffirm the rules of grammar. 
Why should a man hesitate to adopt those rules 
which govern the employment of all his time and 
strength and the activities of all his life, — rules in 
reality much more sensible than those rules of 
grammar which make it possible for the average 
man to express himself correctly? 

Habit and environment have made the most com- 
plicated rules instinctive. Why would it not be the 
same with those which have to do with coordinat- 
ing the movements of the workman ? All this ought 
not to be constantly the subject of argument. It 
ought not to have to be rediscovered. 

Frederick Taylor generously said that if he sacri- 
ficed his tastes, which inclined him towards the 
study of mechanics, in order to accomplish a task 
very often monotonous in spite of its great impor- 
tance, it was in the hope that by so doing he would 



32 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

at least make it possible for others to devote them- 
selves entirely to the development of their natural 
inclination instead of having continually to begin 
over again what he had already done. 

This is the kind of education of a man which 
Frederick Taylor took upon himself. It is a task 
which has always been a thankless one, and which is 
rendered more or less arduous by the particular 
mentality of those whom it addresses. 

The mentality of men varies according to coun- 
try and is all the more difficult to define as each one 
is made up of contradictions. It is generally ad- 
mitted that the Frenchman is little concerned about 
the exclusive ownership of what he has created and 
that he has frequently neglected to exploit his 
finest inventions, contenting himself with having 
labored for humanity. He is, however, possessed 
with a fierce individualism in anything that con- 
cerns his personal liberty. 

It might be said that he never alienates himself 
from himself, but waits until this constraint is put 
upon him from without. It is rarely that he lends 
himself to long collaboration. 

The American, who seems to us to place much 
more emphasis on keeping in his own hands what he 
considers to be his own property, whose motto is 
"Mind your own business," knows, however, how 
to cooperate with others, how to organize a partner- 
ship, and he is willing to make sacrifices to that end. 

To a Frenchman, the work of Frederick Taylor 
is indeed a development of American genius, char- 
acterized by an elevated feeling for the individual. 
Here we find again the effort of the man accustomed 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 33 

to depending on himself alone, especially on his 
own energy and perseverance, constantly taking 
most minute inventory of his personal resources — 
the least as well as the greatest — and improving 
them in order, with the cooperation of his asso- 
ciates, to exploit them. 

Frederick Taylor teaches his countrymen how to 
make tremendous progress in the path which is 
natural to them, by pointing out to them how much 
trained habits increase the efficiency of a man, and 
hence his personal value; and he makes an appeal 
to the confidence Americans have in their own 
ability, to enthuse them to utilize their efforts in 
the shop as rationally and logically as they are 
careful to use them on their own account. 

Again it is to American energy that Mr. Taylor's 
indefatigable efforts to call attention to his ideas 
and to establish them must be ascribed. Taylor's 
ideas have seemed to be revolutionary to some 
Americans. To a Frenchman they were born and 
have developed in the very environment in which 
they should naturally be born and developed, i.e., 
in the country of Benjamin Franklin. 

Taylor gives a lesson of the greatest importance 
to the French in acquainting them with a type of 
organization which applies equally to individual and 
to collective organization, making it possible for 
them to make the best of their natural resources. 

Frederick Taylor liked France and would have 
liked to be of use to her. For the too brief hours 
during which we were together, we happened upon 
a maritime laboratory, on the coast of Brittany, 
born of the most modest beginnings and sheltering 



34 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

for several years the joint labors of fishermen and 
scientists. Discoveries of the greatest importance 
had been made here with the most rudimentary 
material, but they had brought very little honor to 
their authors. The most elementary of their valu- 
able findings were hardly taken advantage of. For 
instance, when they investigated matters of public 
interest such as public health, they brought upon 
themselves endless trouble. 

They consoled themselves with reading the 
accounts of the application made in distant coun- 
tries, of their discoveries, and on such a colossal 
scale as to be almost incredible. Frederick Taylor 
must have made more than one reflection when visit- 
ing this laboratory. At any rate he had the pleas- 
ure of being able to say to his hosts that there was 
no exaggeration in what they had read, and that 
their discoveries had been made the object of the 
most important application. 

Frederick Taylor found there a graphic example 
of a fact which had been pointed out to him again 
and again. What he saw excited his enthusiasm but 
also his desire to help France to derive more prac- 
tical advantage from the discoveries she was able 
to make. He was full of hope on this subject, for he 
could see how completely his ideas had found an 
echo in France, and how serious were the efforts 
already made to put them into practice. And so 
during the last sojourn he made in our midst, in one 
of those addresses in which one would seek in vain 
for a word of flattery, he did not hesitate to salute 
in France the country which offered the finest future 
for the application of his methods. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 35 

The movement then launched, which seemed so 
full of promise, has been arrested by the war, but 
already France is thinking of the future, and of the 
necessity, greater than ever before, of undertaking 
a systematic organization of her resources and of 

her work. 

The "Kultur" imposed by a despotic power will 
always be a horror to the French people, but they 
will gladly accept a method — a plan— which 
encourages the development of individuality, lay- 
ing its foundation on its individuality and giving it 
consciousness from its power. This is what they will 
find in following the path indicated by Frederick 
Taylor. And so it is towards him that many eyes 
are turning to-day. 

Frederick Taylor presented his works in the sim- 
plest possible form without attempting to attract 
any attention to himself and without asking him- 
self whether the reader would care to penetrate his 
personality. His associates have told me from the 
first how dependable was his friendship, so I may 
be permitted to recall the impression which he made 
on a stranger who had the good fortune to pass 
several hours with him, first in his accustomed 
environment and then in France, in altogether dif- 
ferent and greatly varied surroundings. 

Frederick Taylor was an observer of exceptional 
penetration, but his work is witness to the fact that 
he was indeed one of those men, rare in any country, 
who from the beginning of their careers subordinated 
all their actions to a high and perfectly definite 
purpose. No one has ever done so with more energy 
or determination. In full command of this masterly 



36 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

trait of scientific observation which he possessed in 
such high degree, he continually directed it towards 
a definite end. Never did he allow his imagination 
to bewilder his observations, or to alter their ex- 
actness. They all bear the trace of absolute sincerity. 

Again we detect the same integrity when he is 
concerned with the application of his ideas to the 
organization of labor. He is not afraid of provok- 
ing contradiction and he did not welcome that ap- 
probation which is so dangerous and which drowns 
the idea by returning it to that void from which it 
had been delivered. 

Taylor possessed a deep lofty mind, embracing a 
widely extended field of activity. If he gave himself 
particularly to the task of making people under- 
stand the efficacy of his method for the better 
utilization of material resources and of the every- 
day activities; if it pleased him to show, with rare 
ability, that this method could be applied as well 
to agriculture as to mechanics or to sports, he knew 
how to raise himself above his work itself in order 
to affirm that the use of the means which he recom- 
mended must cease with the material world. And 
it is no exaggeration to say, that in struggling against 
the waste of energy and time which constantly ac- 
companies not only industrial labor but also that 
of everyday life, he strives to make a larger place 
for the intellectual life. 

His conception of spiritual endeavors was very 
high. Avoiding a too common confusion, he estab- 
lished an absolute distinction between the work of 
the workman and that of the artist. He knew enough 
to recognize that an artist worthy of the name must 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 37 

always fear to imprint the trace of simply manual 
or physical habits on his work, although the skill of 
the workman is the result of this same methodical 
development of such habits. 

Frederick Taylor regarded spiritual things with 
great respect. He was deeply touched when he 
learned that one of the most authoritative voices 
of the French pulpit, in a daring comparison, had 
not been afraid to define "the Love of God" as 
"the Taylor System of our inner life." 

The man of genius is not frightened by the great- 
ness of the task which he undertakes, and troubles 
himself little about the profit which he ought to 
get out of it, for it is a small task indeed whose 
materialization does not exceed the life of an 
individual. 

Inevitably Frederick Taylor could not have put 
in the complete development of the movement which 
he had begun, but he was able to see that the roots 
were already very deep, and that a brilliant future 
opened up before him. 

His last days were, however, to be greatly sad- 
dened. After having devoted his life to the better- 
ment of material conditions and to the raising of the 
standard, he had to witness the most abominable 
use which man has ever made of his resources. When 
I saw Taylor in Philadelphia on the eve of this ter- 
rible war, he recognized perfectly the importance 
of the preparations made by the Germans and he 
saw, better than anyone else, perhaps, what kind of 
war it would be that would set them in motion. 
But he refused to believe that a man capable of 
unchaining them could exist. 



38 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

This is, however, what happened. The letter 
which he wrote me at that time showed me what a 
shock he had received. He could not free his mind 
from that scene of horror, and it may be believed 
that this obsession hastened his end and that 
Frederick Winslow Taylor was a victim of modern 
barbarism. 



WHAT DO THE GERMANS THINK 
OF TAYLOR? 

BY PROFESSOR A. WALLICHS 

THE character and significance of the Taylor 
doctrine have been accepted by the German 
people only in part, both because the time 
for making clear, either orally or in writing, Taylor's 
meaning has been too short, and because we here 
are just at the beginning of its practical application. 
Nevertheless I cherish the definite hope that in the 
near future the true value of Taylor's efforts will 
be more thoroughly comprehended and appreciated 
by a large number of the German people. The 
essence of the doctrine, namely, "To better the con- 
ditions of the laboring classes and to increase the 
general pleasure in work," must certainly find in 
the German people fertile ground for development. 
This is especially true, because in Germany the de- 
mand for a means to settle social inequalities is 
becoming steadily stronger, and the earnest purpose 
to get together in the pursuit of a common goal 
is beginning to ripen among ever larger sections of 
both labor and capital. 

Taylor did not grow tired of pleading with both 
sides: "Your interests are, for the most part, not 
hostile, but identical." And he did not content 
himself with words alone: he had proven the truth 
of his doctrine in practice before he proclaimed it. 



40 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

In that lies, as I see it, the immense value of his 
work. The world has had enough of the profound 
opinions of learned economists and philosophers as 
to human happiness. Taylor, however, did not give 
his propositions publicity until after he had by hard 
work and incessant struggle thoroughly tested the 
possibility of carrying them out. In his classic 
"Shop Management" he declares repeatedly that 
"nothing is so convincing as bringing to pass actual 
results." 

The remarkable thoroughness in the execution of 
his work, his consideration of all the circumstances, 
— whether or not they had hitherto seemed insig- 
nificant, — his perseverance in the pursuit of his 
aims, must and will find ultimate recognition on the 
part of the German people. Economists, German 
engineers, and scholars who understand the true 
essence of the Taylor doctrines have, almost without 
exception, become his disciples. Among these we 
find men of distinguished reputation such as Bathe- 
nau, Kammerer, Schlesinger, Hempel, Oswald and 
others. Naturally the Taylor principles are most 
widespread in the ranks of engineers and industrial 
managers. Among these are few indeed who do not 
know at least the name of the Taylor System; 
another group, forming the majority, has a superficial 
knowledge of the character of the Taylor doctrine; 
and a group of German engineers, of by no means 
least importance to-day, has acquired a thorough 
understanding in all respects of the great lifework of 
Mr. Taylor. Among these last one finds unreserved 
appreciation, while the critics are found more among 
those who have only a superficial knowledge of the 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 41 

system. This fact is the best recognition of the 
correctness and practical value of Taylor's principles. 
A small group of German scholars and manu- 
facturers, immediately after the publication of 
Taylor's basic works, "Shop Management" and 
"On the Art of Cutting Metals," recognized their 
far-reaching significance. So it seemed to the writer 
a worthy task to make Taylor's books useful to a 
wider circle of German engineers by translating 
them into German. It is worthy of note that the 
latter work, "On the Art of Cutting Metals," met 
with greater appreciation than "Shop Management." 
The reason for this may be found in the fact that 
the latter book dealt with experiments and proper- 
ties of steel and so brought into prominence valu- 
able discoveries in the difficult problem of the proper 
production of high-speed steel, with the result that 
people were eager to utilize this knowledge in the 
metal-working shops. This book aroused the great- 
est interest in manufacturing circles as well as 
among scientists. The minuteness of detail, thor- 
oughness, and uncommonly logical method of Tay- 
lor's work, overcoming all difficulties, called forth 
our undivided admiration. Indeed, the procedure 
as adopted by Taylor to solve the difficult problem 
of the regular production of high-speed steel may 
candidly be designated as classic. The efforts of 
engineers and scientists all over the world to at- 
tain results in similar lines had led to no results, 
because they had failed to investigate each variable, 
of which Taylor names twelve, individually, while 
holding the others constant. Taylor was the first 
one to succeed in a comprehensive plan. He showed 



42 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

how experiments must be conducted in the workshop 
with genuine scientific thoroughness and proper se- 
quence in order to obtain practical results. By this 
Taylor has rendered to industry as well as to science 
inestimable service. It might be further empha- 
sized that the great significance of Taylor's writings 
was recognized simultaneously by engineers and 
scientists. I need but mention the names of Neu- 
haus and Schlesinger. 

After the favorable receptoin which the German 
edition of this book, On the Art of Cutting Metals,'' 
had met in Germany, it was clear that Taylor's 
basic work entitled "Shop Management" could not 
long be withheld from German engineering circles, 
The writer, therefore, undertook at once this task, 
with all the greater zeal because after careful study 
he found it a treasure house of great truths in the 
difficult art of management and especially in the 
treatment of the workmen. Taylor recognized that 
the often asserted antagonism of the interests of 
employer and employee need not exist with proper 
management and treatment; that rather there 
exists a mutual interest in the success of the enter- 
prise, and that this same interest can well be united 
with a higher wage and more humane treatment of 
the worker. With remarkable insight he devised 
ways and means to save unnecessary loss of time, 
yet without the necessity of overworking the oper- 
atives. He recognized the significance in their 
bearing on the final result of all the circumstances 
hitherto considered merely incidental. The small 
things and the seemingly insignificant he found 
worthy of exhaustive investigation; and just because 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 43 

they hitherto had been neglected, these incidentals 
offered so much room for improvement that the 
result of the aggregate was amazingly beneficial. 
No one had suspected how much time actually had 
been lost by unnecessary motions and faulty arrange- 
ment. Taylor shed light in every nook and corner 
of the daily routine, and examined everything in 
the effort for well-planned use of time. His ability 
to grasp things fully and with keen perseverance to 
draw from the knowledge attained its practical appli- 
cation, together with his wonderful knowledge of men 
and his true love for humanity, enabled him to win 
a success which has aroused the astonishment and 
admiration of the world. 

I now turn to the question, "In what measure 
thus far have results been obtained in Germany 
by the application of the Taylor principles?" 

In some places very noteworthy beginnings have 
been made. In many places there exists the "ear- 
nest intention " to gain the economic and social advan- 
tages resulting from the use of the new doctrine. 
However, success in the sense of favorable or un- 
favorable economic influencing of results in industry 
in general presupposes a longer existence of the new 
system. But we cannot yet speak of this, for a 
general dissemination of this new theory in the 
economic circles of this country has taken place 
only within the last two years, in spite of the pub- 
lication in German of the basic Taylor writings, as 
far back as the beginning of 1909. If, therefore, I 
can report but little of our experiences in Germany 
with "scientific management" (as the Taylor doc- 
trine has justly been termed of late), I may never- 



44 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

theless treat the subject somewhat more broadly 
with respect to our domestic industries and speak of 
the probable effect on our social and economic life, 
to be expected from the general introduction of the 
new system. In Germany it is about the same with 
scientific management as with many inventions in 
technique. German industry takes up new ideas 
much more slowly than foreign industries, but it 
soon far surpasses them in development and scope 
because it undertakes the experimentation and com- 
plete working out with genuine German scientific 
thoroughness and perseverance. When I first be- 
came acquainted with Taylor's doctrine, I was 
surprised that these ideas originated in America 
and not in Germany, because the admirable thor- 
oughness, the great perseverance with which Taylor 
pursued his goal, the almost arbitrary rules covering 
all apparently unimportant details and processes, 
the analyzing and observing one by one of all the 
activities and motions, are phenomena which are 
more characteristic of the German than of the Ameri- 
can people. 

This fact established, the many objections to the 
possibility of a general introduction of Taylor's 
scientific management in German industries are 
removed. For the reasons already stated, it is 
admirably suited for our conditions, that is to say, 
the application of these principles as such; not, 
however, the wholesale transplanting of all the regu- 
lations and mechanisms, as employed in any par- 
ticular one or another of the shops organized by 
Taylor in the United States. To be sure, these give 
us the key and the main outlines how to proceed, 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 45 

but by no means the absolutely binding directions 
for its application. We are not to introduce this 
new system, but to develop it point by point, in 
accordance with our own conditions. We should 
proceed according to genuine scientific method, not 
empirically; we must try to find the existing laws 
in both mechanical processes and handwork, and on 
these as a basis, build up standards and laws cover- 
ing how and with what aids the work is to be done. 

The reasons which hinder a rapid and extended 
application of Taylor's doctrine lie not in the limi- 
tations of the field but in the lack of trained forces 
to guide its introduction, and partly also in the 
weakness of human nature among the managers. 
The self-esteem of many of these gentlemen is hurt 
by the thought that processes discovered and devel- 
oped by others should be better than their own kind 
of management worked out through decades of 
struggle and strife, in many cases with successful 
results. They oppose it, therefore, chiefly because 
they fail to recognize the superiority of new methods. 
Many assert that they have long since recognized 
and adopted to a large extent the principles devel- 
oped by Taylor. They also consider that Taylor's 
control of the smallest elements, going beyond 
anything they undertake in their own organization, 
is superfluous hair-splitting. Where these concep- 
tions have taken root, they undoubtedly work against 
the spread of scientific management, since the better 
is always the enemy of the good. Nor can it be 
disputed that at least a part of these assertions are 
correct. We know of numerous organizations in 
most branches of our industries, which have achieved 



46 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

phenomenal success because of their well regulated 
and fairly well executed planning of work; but no 
one had proven or even suspected that thorough 
scientific observation of all, even the minutest and 
seemingly most insignificant processes, would result 
in such significant reductions in the time and effort 
of work. No one else has shown Taylor's perse- 
verance in carrying through a well-defined logical 
program. Still less have our managers perceived the 
importance of the cooperation of the workers for 
obtaining the greatest economy. The social aspects 
of his success are not sufficiently recognized. Taylor 
himself places them above the purely technical 
features. Just a short time ago he expressed himself 
clearly on this subject to a German visitor. His 
words follow: 

"These plans for reducing the cost of production 
will be improved and surpassed by others, primarily 
through machine technique and also through better 
ideas of organization; of all these things which 
to-day we claim as the best obtainable, not one 
will remain. 

"But one thing will and must remain, and that is 
the basic idea which guided me, from the very begin- 
ning, in all my work; namely, the fundamental 
recognition which alone carries us forward: 

"THE EARNEST AND HONEST EFFORT FOR IMPROVED 
RELATIONS BETWEEN EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE, 
THE STRIVING TO ABOLISH THE ANTAGONISM BE- 
TWEEN THESE TWO FACTIONS TO THIS WE MUST 

STEADFASTLY HOLD." 

Such words prove that Taylor sees, in social prog- 
ress, his greatest success. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 47 

To judge by the numerous statements which have 
come to me from managers, I cannot conclude that 
the large majority of these men deny the superiority 
of Taylor's ideas over established conceptions. We 
have a sufficient number of men who, free from an 
exaggerated idea of their own success, wish to make 
the most of the economic value of this new doctrine. 
But more difficult to meet is the above mentioned 
lack of organizers trained in Taylor's ideas. For 
the improvement of this condition, both public and 
private bodies should cooperate in the interests of 
industry and, through special courses of instruction 
and trips to the United States for study, take steps 
to build up a suitable force of teachers. 

The systematic training of organizers is quite 
essential for the following reasons. The develop- 
ment of scientific management must be undertaken 
in the factories without disturbance and along with 
the regular routine work, by a special organizer, 
not by the manager of the plant. The manager 
has neither the time nor the thorough knowledge to 
carry out all the details of study in accordance with 
the prescribed regulations. The introduction of 
such a new task requires, therefore, considerable 
additional work, which primarily has little to do 
with the process of production; step by step after 
preparation, the various departments of the shop 
undergo reorganization. 

All the reports received from German industrial 
circles of initial experience during introduction are, 
almost without exception, favorable. As an example 
I append a report of a firm engaged in the wood 
industry in the Rhine district: 



48 FREDERICK WlNSLOW TAYLOR 

"The first test with Taylor's principles was made 
on a 'Fasson' lathe which turned out large quan- 
tities of wooden pieces for cabinet makers. A 
worker on this machine worked at piece work at 
the rate of three (3) pfennigs per meter, earning 
at his maximum capacity between 4 and 4.20 marks 
daily, accomplishing about 130 to 150 meters' work 
during the same working time. After time studies 
were taken with a stop watch, it proved that the 
actual working time was only one-fourth of the 
total time and that the rest of the time was lost 
through the sharpening of tools, setting up, repair- 
ing of belts, bringing of the material, etc. 

"We introduced, first of all, tools of high-speed 
steel instead of the ordinary kind hitherto used; 
we replaced the existing bronze bearings with ball 
bearings, and the ordinary belts with best quality 
leather belts. The result was remarkable. Al- 
though the worker was transferred from piece work 
to day work based on his average daily earnings, 
he easily produced 300 meters daily. After the 
introduction of a premium system, based on his daily 
wage, in a short time he ran up to 400 meters daily. 
Through further time studies it was then established 
that the forward and backward run of the machine 
which heretofore had been done by the workman, 
could be done automatically, and that during the 
backward run the next piece of material could be 
brought up by the workman. The result of these 
further improvements is the present daily production 
of at least 550 meters and average earning of about 
5 marks daily for young workers from 17 to 18 
years of age, while formerly adults, working to the 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 49 

limit of their endurance, could earn only 4.20 
marks. 

"As we did not simply pocket as profit the ad- 
vantage in production so obtained, but reduced 
correspondingly the selling price, there resulted 
immediately an increased volume of sales, so that 
not only was no reduction in working force neces- 
sary, but on the contrary, the installation of a 
second and then a third Fasson lathe. 

"To the above mentioned favorable result was 
added the circumstance that, according to Taylor's 
doctrine, we took the Fasson lathes at once away 
from the supervision of the general foreman, and 
instead we established a functional foreman, whose 
only duty was to provide the raw material and set 
up the machines. The above result shows how this 
unproductive labor paid for itself." 

This report is in many respects very instructive. 
It shows that in a plant excellently managed accord- 
ing to ordinary standards, studies made in a small 
auxiliary department under the inspiration of Taylor's 
works, and changes made on the basis of these 
studies, have resulted in surprisingly large economies 
for the business, and in essentially increased earnings 
for the workman; this, too, without taking any 
steps to change the entire organization through 
especially trained organizers. Naturally in this 
plant further studies and adjustments will follow 
until, in the course of years, it can be said that in 
all respects the standardization of the working proc- 
esses has been completed. The report shows that 
where the determination for improvement exists, 
former shortcomings are quickly found. Without 



50 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

exaggeration one can maintain that in all plants 
like successes in individual cases can be obtained. 

Another report lies before me, from the repair 
shop of a chemical plant in the south of Germany. 
Here, to be sure, the work was done by one of the 
few organizers now living in Germany, who had been 
trained in one of the Taylor plants in the United 
States. The success here was in an altogether 
different field; while in the former instance the 
improvements were limited principally to an im- 
provement in method for a work chiefly mechanical, 
in the chemical plant the success was achieved 
exclusively by a strictly supervised preparation and 
division of the tasks to be done by the repair workers, 
employed mainly on handwork. A work order in 
the Taylor sense, heretofore considered impossible, 
was introduced. This gave to each workman each 
day a task defined in writing and with only one 
possible interpretation as to time, nature, and extent. 
At the same time order in keeping of stores was 
established according to the Taylor methods. Even 
in the first year after the introduction, the yearly 
losses in stores were greatly decreased, and the amount 
of work accomplished was greatly increased. Great 
economies were already effected, without any change 
in the wage system. As is known, Taylor and his 
followers have obtained the greatest increase in 
production through changing the wage system in 
such a way that the workman, on accomplishing the 
tasks in the prescribed time, receives a considerable 
increase in wage. 

The workmen pay no attention to the time limit 
if the incentive of increased wages does not impel 



FREDERICK W I N S L O W TAYLOR 51 

them to it. The use of such wage systems as 
increase the desire to accomplish the task can, how- 
ever, be successful only when a strictly regulated 
scheduling of order of work, of moving of material, 
and of maintenance of standards, etc., has been put 
through. So far as I know, no plant in Germany 
has yet reached this stage ; but from previous obser- 
vations I do not doubt that we shall ultimately do 
so. In one department of a large Berlin machine 
shop the men no longer object as they have hereto- 
fore to the exact measurement by the stop watch 
of the working time of the best workmen for the 
purpose of determining a just piece rate. They 
have recognized this method as just and, since the 
introduction of this strictly controlled management, 
they have drawn essentially higher wages, averaging 
90 pfennigs per hour. Of course the stop watch 
can be used only openly for the measuring of the 
working time, any underhanded methods being 
rightly subject to deep mistrust. And you must 
not call it the "Taylor System," the worker's press 
having frequently warned against this system and 
the workers themselves repeatedly been urged to 
resist every attempt at its introduction. 

It will be seen, from these reports, that Taylor's 
ideas have found fertile ground here in Germany. 
The great European war has been an obstacle in the 
development of this as in so many other relations. 
Nevertheless, I am fully convinced that after peace 
is proclaimed, which, let us hope, will be soon, 
Taylor's stimulation will be felt again in Germany 
with redoubled force — to bless a favorable economic 
development and to better the lot of the workman. 



APPRECIATION OF MR. FREDERICK 
W. TAYLOR 

BY PROFESSOR J. J. SEDERHOLM 

THE most memorable event during my three 
months traveling in North America was 
undoubtedly my meeting with Mr. Taylor. 
It was so, both because I personally admired him 
so much, and because I think that his teachings are 
exactly what we want in my country, Finland. 

I can add nothing to the characteristics of his 
personality, and should I speak of the kindness 
with which he offered me his help, I should have 
only to describe what all of his friends have expe- 
rienced. Let me therefore restrict myself to con- 
sidering what benefit my own country may be 
expected to reap from his influence. 

As is well known, the struggle for existence 
between the nations of Europe is very keen both 
politically and economically. The small nations in 
particular are forced to strain all their efforts in 
order not to be overwhelmed or left behind. 

It is therefore simply a necessity for us to learn 
from every nation, appropriating the best which 
they have to offer. Personally I think that we have 
especially much to learn from the United States. 
Of this I may mention an instance, rather trivial 
in itself, but significant. When our sportsmen 
formed the ambitious plan that Finland should beat, 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR S3 

at the last Olympian games, as many of the other 
countries as possible, they took their training 
methods from America. The result was that little 
Finland became the fourth country of the world in 
this international sporting contest, ranking next to 
the United States, Sweden, and England, and beat- 
ing Germany, France and other large countries. 

Now I think that in all kinds of human industry 
we also ought to learn from the Americans how to 
"go ahead," hoping for a similar success if we do so. 

The Taylor System is to Europe not only "an 
American lesson," it is the American lesson. It is 
true that I have read in a foreign newspaper an article 
about it, full of misrepresentations, in which it 
was styled "false Americanism." To me, on the 
contrary, it is the very essence of good Americanism. 

We have, in most countries of Europe, enough of 
strong and industrious laborers, but much work is 
here going on with an exasperating inefficiency. 
Remember that Finland lies in the same latitude 
as Greenland, a circumstance which accounts suffi- 
ciently for a good deal of dullness. When our people 
go to America, they are stimulated and work very 
differently, but when they return it is not long before 
they revert to earlier habits. 

The Taylor System enables us to introduce Ameri- 
can briskness in every field of human industry in 
Europe. 

In my youth I read, with much pleasure, the book 
of Laboulaye, "Paris in America." Now we want 
another thing, which might be properly called " Phil- 
adelphia in Europe." Every workshop in Europe 
where the Taylor methods are introduced is like a 



54 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

little Taylor-Philadelphia, an American colony, 
founded by the followers of Mr. Taylor. 

There we will learn how to work with American 
quickness and efficiency. But, as is well known, 
the Taylor System is not at all a method of "speed- 
ing up." It is a system of working intelligently, 
with spared effort, and it offers to everybody taking 
part in the work advantages unheard of before. 
Therefore, every "Philadelphia in Europe" may also, 
in accordance with the literal meaning of the name 
of the Quaker City, be called a "fraternity," a 
"brother loving community." Every workshop 
where the Taylor System is used is a place where 
men work in harmony, in conjoint effort, to mutual 
benefit, and more intelligently than ever before. 

This we regard to be the great discovery of Mr. 
Taylor, that he has found the necessity of using 
much more brains than before in managing industries 
and, in general, all human work. His scheme seems 
to be as simple and obvious as the famous egg of 
Columbus, but it is, however, in most fields an 
innovation. 

Last winter when I was alternately lecturing on 
the Taylor System and the Evolution of the Animal 
World, I was struck by a curious analogy. In the 
history of the earth, it was only at a late date that 
nature discovered the usefulness of large brains. 
The monster reptiles of the Mesozoic era had only 
minute brains in their gigantic bodies. Still at the 
eve of the Tertiary era mammals with the size of 
our cattle had brains as small as a walnut, and it 
was not until the end of that era that the brains 
attained their present size. This development reached 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR $$ 

its climax in Man, Homo Sapiens, the animal with 
brains, who, on account of his intellect, became the 
master of the earth. 

Industry has still to learn the same lesson. It has 
not yet advanced beyond the Mesozoic stage, but 
the time will soon come when people will regard 
shops without a planning department of sufficient 
size, shops where hundreds of laborers are managed 
by half a dozen of engineers and foremen, with the 
same wonder as is felt by us when we look at the 
skeleton of a Diplodocus Carnegie with its gigantic 
body and almost microscopical brain. And when 
that time arrives, then everybody will also recognize 
the greatness of Frederick Winslow Taylor, the 
discoverer of the simple truth that large brains are 
necessary in industries and, in general, for managing 
all kinds of human labor. 



BY CARL G. BARTH 

WHILE I made Mr. Taylor's personal 
acquaintance at least as far back as the 
year 1884, while working for William 
Sellers & Co. of this city as a draftsman, and as such 
occasionally had to do with the working up of some of 
his ideas for the improvement of machine tools, it 
was not until the summer of the year 1899 that I 
became associated with him at the works of the 
Bethlehem Steel Co., an association which continued 
uninterruptedly until his death, nearly sixteen years. 

But while therefore, abstractly, in a better posi- 
tion than anybody else to give an account of his 
work and influence during this period of his life, I 
am by temperament, and by lack of education along 
certain lines, anything but fitted for such a task in 
a manner befitting an occasion like this. Besides, 
the time allotted is too short for this. What I 
can say will therefore be of a fragmentary nature 
only, and principally intended to give a little in- 
sight into Mr. Taylor's great character, as I learned 
to view it in my association with him. 

When Mr. Taylor began the original work that 
finally culminated in a complete system of scientific 
management for industrial establishments, he had 
no idea of what he was steering towards. The 
difficulties that first beset him in his career as a 
leader of men, led him to believe that most of them 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 57 

would disappear if he could find some scientific 
way of predetermining the time it should take to 
do a given piece of work in a machine tool, such as 
a lathe or a planer. However, it took him and his 
several associates a period of some eighteen years 
before this problem was even theoretically solved 
to his satisfaction, and still, odd as it seems, the 
solution effected is to-day almost forgotten, in 
view of the many other problems that beset the 
management of an industrial institution, for which 
Mr. Taylor has also offered such eminently satis- 
factory solutions along scientific lines. 

However, when 1 joined Mr. Taylor at Bethlehem, 
it was for the express purpose of assisting him in the 
solution of this, his original pet problem; and I 
shall never forget the intense delight evinced by Mr. 
Taylor on the morning of a certain day when I was 
able to hand him an empirical mathematical formula 
representing the results obtained by a set of experi- 
ments made in metal cutting with high-speed tools 
of his and Mr. White's renowned make, which was 
at once recognized as the beginning of a better way 
of attacking the problem than anything previously 
brought to light. 

The fact that the work was not his own did not 
in the least detract from his satisfaction. Great 
soul that he was, it did not matter to him whence 
the solution came, — his efforts for so many years 
seemed finally likely of being crowned with success, 
and that was all he cared for. 

It was a few months later that the final solution 
of this problem enabled Mr. Taylor's task system, in 
conjunction with Mr. Gantt's bonus, as a substi- 



58 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

tute for Mr. Taylor's differential piece rates, to be 
instituted at Bethlehem. Inside of a comparatively 
short time this led to that most astonishing increase 
in production, which at the time was the wonder of 
all visitors to the works, and which was partly due 
to the high speed tools, and partly to the scientific 
methods employed in their use on machines that 
had been rebuilt and respeeded to meet the new condi- 
tions, in connection with the reward to the workmen 
who properly cooperated in the whole matter. 

My first visit with Mr. Taylor at Bethlehem 
for the purpose of discussing a possible engagement 
happened to be on a day that certain yard laborers, 
who were to be put on piece rates, threatened to 
strike. Word to that effect reached Mr. Taylor 
during our interview, but while it is impossible to 
believe that it did not inwardly affect him, he did 
not betray the slightest perturbance and completed 
his interview with me as if nothing had happened. 
I will add that I learned later that the strike did 
not take place. 

While Mr. Taylor at times was a very exacting 
master, and at all times demanded that every sub- 
ordinate do his full duty, he was also so high minded 
that he readily took a reprimand from a subordinate. 
I shall thus never forget the fine manner in which 
he once took a most rude reminder from myself, and I 
cannot refrain from the temptation to tell the story. 

I was in his office waiting for his attention, when a 
captain of the army, who was stationed at Bethle- 
hem as head inspector for the Ordnance Department, 
brought in a certain colonel from the Watervliet 
Arsenal, to renew a former acquaintance with Mr. 



FREDERICK WINSL OW TAYLOR 59 

Taylor. All three gentlemen were enthusiastic 
golfers, so that the conversation soon turned to this 
subject, which was kept up, not only until the colonel 
had been escorted to his carriage, but long after Mr. 
Taylor and the captain had returned to the office, 
where by this time some three other subordinates, 
besides myself, were waiting to see Mr. Taylor. I 
finally got so impatient that I broke in on the two 
gentlemen with a: "Hang your golf talk, gentlemen, 
it has lasted long enough. I am here to do business 
and want attention." 

The effect of this was about the same as a thunder- 
bolt from a clear sky, and sent the captain out of the 
door and Mr. Taylor back to his desk, where I sat 
down with him to transact the business in hand. 
Before starting in, however, I felt that a humble 
apology for my extreme rudeness was in order, but 
Mr. Taylor waived it aside by a most kindly pat on 
my back, at the same time saying, "Mr. Barth, it 
is all right. There are times when it is a subordi- 
nate's duty to call a superior's attention to his duty, 
and that is all you did." I can recall a number of 
superiors I have had in the past, that would have all 
but fired me, if they had been in Mr. Taylor's place. 

Perhaps the greatest lesson taught some of us 
by Mr. Taylor, is the value of confidence in general 
principles and general experiences. 

I have thus never forgotten the absolute confidence 
with which he some twelve years ago assured a 
certain prominent manufacturer that the recent 
favorable reports the latter had received about 
greatly improved conditions in a plant in another 
city in which he was interested, could not represent 



60 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

the facts; it would, he said, in the very nature 
of the conditions that were known to have existed 
there a few months earlier, take almost as many- 
years to bring about the alleged improvements. 
This subsequently proved to be the case. 

His faith in scientific methods and the immutable- 
ness of natural laws and general principles, he only 
shared, of course, with numberless scientists of his 
day, but as a practical engineer and manager he 
had had experiences that do not come within the 
range of the professional scientist. 

Another of Mr. Taylor's most striking character- 
istics was his great appreciation of those of his 
superiors of former times who had taught him 
valuable lessons. For some of those he did not 
entertain a high general regard, — but with a fine 
discrimination he would laud the good he had seen 
in them, and draw his lesson from it. And as regards 
seeing the good in other people, the development of 
his character, as I had the rare opportunity to notice 
it, resembled what I once heard a lecturer say about 
Abraham Lincoln. "His heart grew more and 
more tender as the years went by, until just before 
his death he was ever ready to see excuses for the 
behavior of even those of his disciples who were not 
as loyal as they might be to the great ideals for which 
he had worked so faithfully and disinterestedly." 

Great was his work viewed from only the material 
side: greater, by far, were the ideals that prompted 
it, and which he left to sustain us, as they did him, 
through the numerous difficulties, large and small, 
which the practical continuation of his work carries 
with it. 



BY HENRY L. GANTT 

IT was my good fortune to be associated with 
Frederick Winslow Taylor when, as a young 
man, he was developing those characteristics 
that were to make him famous. 

His reputation does not depend upon the fact 
that he designed and built the most successful big 
steam hammer in the world, or that he developed a 
method of treating tool steel that trebled its cutting 
power, or that he determined the laws of cutting 
metals, or even that he was the father of scientific 
management. These were incidents in his career, 
and only the logical results of his methods. At an 
early date he realized how much of the world's 
work was based on precedent or opinion, and under- 
took to base all his actions on knowledge and fact. 
Endowed naturally with untiring energy and a 
wonderfully analytical mind, he concentrated all 
the power of that combination on the problem of 
determining the facts he needed. He was interested 
in what had been done mainly for the indication it 
gave of what could be done. His mind was con- 
tinually on the future, and to him the great value 
of knowledge was that it enabled him to anticipate 
that future. Accurate in his calculations and logi- 
cal in his conclusions, he never failed to put his 
trust in the results of his investigations, and often 



62 FREDERICK WIN SLOW TAYLOR 

accomplished what was considered by others to be 
impossible. Indeed it was those problems that had 
been given up by others as impossible of exact 
solution that it was his delight to attack, and it is 
surprising to how many of them he found that 
solution. 

Balked at the outset of his career as foreman of 
the machine shop of the Midvale Steel Company 
by the lack of knowledge of cutting steel which then 
existed, he set himself the task of suppyling that 
lack. The first three years were spent in finding out 
how to study the problem; and, although the work 
was not completed for over twenty years, it is a 
fact that when I entered his employ in 1887 the 
fundamental laws had already been approximately 
determined. Subsequent investigations served to 
confirm what had been done and to correct minor 
inaccuracies. 

At Bethlehem he became so interested in deter- 
mining these laws exactly, that it is doubtful if 
he ever realized how wonderfully accurate his earlier 
results really were. To be sure, much more ground 
was covered in the subsequent work, but as an in- 
vestigation into the laws of cutting metals, his work 
as a young man at the Midvale Steel Works stands 
out, to my mind, as far the more remarkable achieve- 
ment. In his subsequent work he followed strictly 
the methods he had previously perfected. 

One of the by-products of this investigation was 
the discovery of the Taylor-White process of treat- 
ing high-speed steel, the far reaching effect of which 
has not only not yet been realized, but cannot be 
until all the other problems entering into machine 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 63 

shop management have been given the same kind 
of study as has been given the cutting of metals. 

The least heard of, but, to my mind, his most 
daring feat, was the design of the great hammer of 
the Midvale Steel Co., which kept its alignment 
by the elasticity of its parts which yielded to the 
force of a foul blow and returned exactly to their 
former position. Dependence upon the principle of 
elasticity enabled him to build a hammer which, 
for its weight, had far greater power than any other 
hammer that had ever been built. All previous 
hammers of this class had been designed to keep their 
alignment by great mass and stiffness, and it took 
a bold man to throw precedent aside when the stake 
was such a large one. I do not know of any more 
daring or successful piece of engineering construction. 

The fact that he became a pioneer in another 
field is not surprising, for he was destined to be a 
leader in whatever field his activities took him. 

It seems quite likely that if he had adhered to 
what was then known as strictly engineering, he 
would have made even a greater reputation than he 
achieved in the field of management. 

The work by which he is best known, however, is 
not what was then regarded as strictly engineering. 
Strange as it may seem, although much knowledge 
and thought had been devoted to the design of ma- 
chinery and apparatus, but little study had been 
given to the possibilities of the men who were to 
operate that machinery. Even to this day many 
engineers consider their work done when they have 
designed and built and demonstrated the possi- 
bilities of a piece of apparatus. They seem to feel 



64 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

that the efficient operation of it is not in their prov- 
ince. Mr. Taylor felt otherwise. To him perfec- 
tion in design was worthless without efficiency in 
operation, and at an early date he turned his atten- 
tion to the efficient utilization of human effort. 

In this work he used the same method that had 
already brought him success, namely, to disregard 
opinions, from whatever source, unless substan- 
tiated by facts. Where facts were not available, 
and they seldom were, he used the scientific method 
for their determination. 

When I went to the Midvale Steel Works in 1887, 
he had already made considerable progress in this 
work, and had fully developed the methods of detail 
analysis and study which later became the origin 
of scientific management. 

He recognized as an economic as well as an ethical 
fact, that the employer should always consider the 
interests of the employee. Endowed with vast 
energy and great ability to work, he recognized 
the advantage such qualities would be to others, 
and offered high wages to those who would develop 
them. That he was correct is shown by the remark- 
able success which has been attained by all who 
profited by his training. 

If I were asked to point out his most prominent 
characteristic, I should say that it was his ability 
to prosecute the task he had set himself regardless 
of the lack of sympathy of his friends and the criti- 
cism of his enemies. Having determined on a course 
of action he pursued it regardless of consequences; 
and inasmuch as such courses were planned by a 
clear head and followed with an iron will, he often 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 65 

accomplished results far in excess of what even his 
most earnest supporters thought possible. 

To end here would not complete our picture. He 
was not the steam roller that some people like to 
represent him, but he did believe that a strenuous 
life was the life worth while, and that it not only- 
brought more financial compensation, but that it 
added to the usefulness and happiness of men. He 
believed : 

"That when the day is over and your work is all well done, 
That when the campaign's ended, that when the battle's 

won, 
Then friendship keen, and memory of many happy days 
Bring the glorious satisfaction that a life of action pays." 

He had still another side: People said he made 
work of his play. True, work was his joy. Not 
the routine that could be done by anybody, but the 
work that others had been unable to do. An un- 
solved problem was a constant challenge to him, and 
he attacked it with a thoroughness and an eagerness 
that it is hard to comprehend. The fact that for 
several years he continually worked at problems 
that brought him no financial return, is evidence 
that he had reached the stage when — 

"We shall work for an age at a sitting, 

And never be tired at all; 
And no one shall work for money, 

And no one shall work for fame; 
But each for the joy of working. 

And only the Master shall praise, 

And only the Master shall blame." 



STAGES BETWEEN MIDVALE AND 
BETHLEHEM 

BY SANFORD E. THOMPSON 

THERE stands out vividly in my mind an 
occasion some twenty-five years ago when 
a messenger pulled me out of bed at three 
o'clock one winter morning to go down to the pulp 
mill. I was met there by Mr. Taylor. " Mr. Thomp- 
son, I told you to have an idler built for every belt 
in this mill. Why was this not done? I don't 
want any excuses — I won't have any excuses — 
why wasn't it done?" This was one of my first 
lessons in the training which every man received 
who came under Mr. Taylor's direction in those 
days. Over and over again we would hear the 
requirement to "Get there. It doesn't make any 
difference how you get there, but get there." And 
again, "Don't wait for anything." And we mar- 
veled and still marvel how he could remember the 
numerous instructions he gave us all and call us to 
account in his extraordinarily emphatic manner for 
the least omission. 

My personal friendship with Mr. Taylor really 
began as a result of my insistence on repeating a 
certain unsatisfactory test. This test required some 
forty hours of continuous application. Mr. Taylor 
was always on the lookout for traits in others which 
embraced this principle of carrying a thing through 
to its conclusion. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 67 

It was always his plan to establish system even in 
details. He would say, "If a belt breaks once, it 
is excusable. If the same belt breaks again from 
the same cause it is absolutely inexcusable. A 
routine plan of inspection or repairs should have 
been adopted to prevent the second break." And 
is not this one explanation for his various accom- 
plishments? His numerous patents, his exhaustive 
researches, his individual attainments in many 
fields, all had the express purpose of overcoming 
some practical difficulty by improving the method 
so as to prevent recurrence. 

This energy and thoroughness characterized his 
services as general manager of two large sulphite 
pulp mills, one of them in Maine and the other in 
Wisconsin, during the years 1888 to 1893. 

He was selected for this position when in Midvale 
by a group of capitalists who, as government officials 
in the War Department, had noted Mr. Taylor's 
accomplishments in the manufacture of war materials 
at Midvale. In the construction of the mills he 
introduced large quantities of special machinery 
which he designed himself. Here, as elsewhere, he 
considered not the question of whether a certain 
thing had been used before, but he was always 
seeking out a method or a machine which would 
accomplish the work in hand regardless of precedent. 

In one of the pulp mills he applied piece work 
to all the complicated operations of manufacture 
by his method of elementary rate fixing, and this 
resulted within 18 months in doubling the output. 

Leaving this company in 1893, he devoted his time 
for the next ten years to the introduction of book- 



68 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

keeping and of management methods into various 
plants in the East and Central West. 

This period, from the time of leaving Midvale 
until he completed his work at South Bethlehem, 
was in a sense the most important of his life. During 
this time, as a result of his practical contact with 
managers and workingmen, he developed the prin- 
ciples which have been designated and accepted as 
scientific management. 

Coming from Midvale, we recognize the compe- 
tent, hustling, able, inventive engineer. In his 
notable paper, "A Piece Rate System," read before 
the Mechanical Engineers in 1895, we find the first 
presentation of what he then termed "elementary 
rate fixing," that is, the determination of the proper 
time for doing a piece of work by unit time study. 
But we find in this paper scarcely a reference to 
the broader subject of management or scientific 
standardization. 

In his paper, "Notes on Belting," however, pre- 
sented two years earlier, in 1893, the principles of 
standardization and of scientific research are clearly 
brought out in the development of definite laws, 
and of a definite system for handling the complex 
problem of belting — the adoption of the scientific 
method — the method which eliminates from a test 
all variables but one, the method which develops 
a problem step by step until the attainment of 
definite laws. 

The principle of unit times, which is now recog- 
nized as forming the basis for the accurate analysis 
of labor operations, was completely developed while 
at Midvale. During that same period also were made 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 69 

the belting tests and the beginning of various other 
researches aiming toward standardization of methods. 

Not, however, until the publication of "Shop 
Management" in 1903, is seen the development of 
the complete system based not on theory, not on 
opinion, but as a result of this broad experience in 
operation gained by his contact with manufacturing 
plants all over the country. 

In other words, he discovered as a result of his 
work — a fact probably not yet fully appreciated 
even by some of you here to-day — that, in order 
to carry on these fundamental principles of ele- 
mentary rate fixing, of unit times, there must be 
embraced a comprehensive plan of organization, 
a plan which includes the establishment of func- 
tional management, with its planning, its routing, 
its inspecting, and its training of employees, and 
above all, with its scientific analysis of labor and 
machine operations for the purpose of standardiza- 
tion of materials and methods. 

As I said, at the beginning of this period we have 
the able engineer: at the close of this period we find 
the scientist, the man who has worked out, years in 
advance of his time, the application of science to 
the cutting of metals and the application of science 
to industrial management. 

In 1894, while he was engaged in this introduction 
of management methods, Mr. Taylor proposed that 
I take up with him an analysis of work in the build- 
ing trades with a view to publishing unit costs of 
various kinds of construction work. This has 
resulted in the publication of the books "Concrete, 
Plain and Reinforced" and "Concrete Costs," and 



70 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

material for other works on earthwork, carpentry, 
etc., is nearly ready for publication. 

In this writing of books we find the same fidelity 
to standards. He made up his mind as a result 
of examination of facts that a thing should be done 
in a certain way, and in that way it must be done. 
While Mr. Taylor did comparatively little in the 
direct preparation of these books, their success is 
due to Taylor principles. Adopt standards — pre- 
sent simple, clear-cut conclusions — give conclusions 
at the beginning of every discussion. And it is 
interesting to learn that these principles are being 
accepted at the present time in engineering reports 
and technical writing as a result of a precedent thus 
established. 

At the time of beginning this work I made my 
first visit to Mr. Taylor's early home — a quiet 
mansion located on Ross St., Germantown. I had 
the great privilege of meeting his father and mother, 
an accomplished gentleman and a gentlewoman of 
the type rarely met with in the younger generations 
— in a home where the refinement of the family 
life was marked. It had been the desire of these 
parents to give the son in his young days a broad 
education. He spent three years, from his thirteenth 
to his sixteenth year, in Europe, traveling and study- 
ing music, art, and language. It is suggested that his 
acquaintance with the beauties of the Alpine passes 
developed a love of nature which found expression 
in his design and layout of the Boxly Estate. 

It was during this association with him that I came 
to understand his real character. Before this I was 
a little in doubt as to what was the real Taylor — 



FREDERICK W I N S L O W TAYLOR J\ 

whether he was essentially the taskmaster that he 
sometimes appeared, that he seemed to be when he 
would require the attainment of the apparently- 
insurmountable, when he hauled us over the coals 
as man never did before. But I soon learned to dis- 
tinguish the man himself from certain qualities that 
were not really traits but were simply acquired by 
him in his usual thorough and scientific manner 
because he saw that at certain times and under 
specific conditions a special plan of action, a special 
policy, a special manner of speech was necessary in 
order to train his subordinates or in order to accom- 
plish his purpose. Always underneath was the 
generosity, courtesy, tenderness, loyalty to friends 
and subordinates, readiness to appreciate and com- 
mend, absolute fairness. He went into everything 
he undertook a little farther — often immeasurably 
farther — than anyone else had gone before. As 
one of his Midvale associates said to me, "Taylor 
is all right except that he is a generation ahead of 
his times." That remark was made more than 
twenty years ago, and the industrial world is gradu- 
ally growing up to the level then already attained 
by him. 

Throughout my association with Mr. Taylor that 
which stands out most clearly is the definite accom- 
plishment of purpose, not by brute force, not by the 
temporary and physical means of sheer weight or 
numbers, not of the type of ability which built the 
pyramids, but of the type which produced the accu- 
rate mechanism of the watch — the adherence to the 
scientific method, the appreciation of the establish- 
ment of standards. 



BY LOUIS D. BRANDEIS 

AMIDST our rejoicing over the achievements 
of this great man comes one regret. Those 
for whom he labored most, the working 
people, are not represented at this meeting. 

It was Taylor's purpose to make the laborer 
worthy of his hire; to make the hire worthy of the 
laborer; to make the standard of living and the 
conditions of working worthy to be called American. 
The American standard of living implies a wage 
adequate for proper housing and food and clothing, 
for proper education and recreation, and for insur- 
ance against those contingencies of sickness, accident, 
unemployment, premature death or superannua- 
tion, which fall so heavily upon the working classes. 
That standard implies hours of labor sufficiently 
short to permit those who work to perform also their 
duties as citizens and to share in the enjoyment of 
life. That standard implies postponement of the 
working period to an age which enables the child 
to develop into a rounded man or woman. That 
standard implies working conditions which are not 
only consistent with the demands of health and 
safety, but are also such as may make work for 
others what it was for Taylor — the greatest of 
life's joys. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 73 

Taylor recognized that in order to make such a 
standard of living and of working attainable the 
productivity of man must be greatly increased; 
that waste must be eliminated, and particularly the 
waste of effort which bears so heavily upon the 
worker. And yet the man who sought so to develop 
industry as to enable labor to reach these higher 
standards of working and of living met, throughout 
his life, widespread opposition from those whom he 
sought particularly to help. Let all who are under- 
taking to carry forward his work recognize this 
hostility as a fact of fundamental importance; for 
it presents the main problem which confronts scien- 
tific management. 

The causes of this hostility are twofold : 

First: Only a part of the necessary industrial 
truths have been as yet developed. 

Second: The necessary assent to the application 
of these truths has not been obtained. 

Taylor was a great scientist. He established cer- 
tain truths, fundamental in their nature. But he 
obviously covered only a part of the field of inquiry. 
The truths he discovered must be further developed 
and they must be supplemented by, and adjusted 
to, other truths. The greater productivity of labor 
must be not only attainable, but attainable under 
conditions consistent with the conservation of health, 
the enjoyment of work, and the development of the 
individual. The facts in this regard have not been 
adequately established. In the task of ascertaining 
whether proposed conditions of work do conform 
to these requirements, the laborer himself should 
take part. He is indeed a necessary witness. Like- 



74 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

wise, in the task of determining whether in the dis- 
tribution of the gain in productivity, justice is being 
done to the worker, the participation of representa- 
tives of labor is indispensable for the inquiry which 
involves essentially the exercise of judgment. 

Furthermore, those who undertake to apply the 
truths which Taylor disclosed must remember that 
in a democracy it is not sufficient to have discovered 
an industrial truth, or even the whole truth. Such 
truth can rule only when accompanied by the con- 
sent of men. 

We who have had occasion to consider the hos- 
tility of labor leaders to the introduction of scientific 
management know that the hostility has in large 
measure been due to misunderstanding. Much of 
all the waste which Taylor undertook to eliminate 
has no direct relation to the specific functions of the 
workingman. It deals with waste in machinery, in 
supplies, in planning, in adjustment of production 
and distribution — matters in which changes cannot 
possibly affect the workman injuriously. And yet 
we found in many leaders of labor undiscriminating 
opposition to the whole of the so-called Taylor 
system. But even if we succeed through education 
in eliminating the general hostility to the introduc- 
tion of scientific management in departments of the 
business which do not directly affect labor, there 
will remain a wide field where the proposed changes 
do directly affect labor in which there is determined 
opposition. This opposition can be overcome only 
through securing the affirmative cooperation of the 
labor organizations. In a democratic community 
men who are to be affected by a proposed change 



RFDERICK WINSLOWTAYLOR 75 

of conditions should be consulted, and the inno- 
vators must carry the burden of convincing others 
at each stage in the process of change that what is 
being done is right. Labor must have throughout 
an opportunity of testing whether that which is 
being recorded as a truth is really a truth, and 
whether it is the whole truth. Labor must not only 
be convinced of the industrial truths — which sci- 
entific management is disclosing — but must also 
be convinced that those truths are consistent with 
what may be termed human truths. Is the greater 
productivity attained clearly consistent with the 
health of the body, the mind, and the soul of the 
worker? Is it consistent with industrial freedom? 
Is it consistent with greater joy in work, and gen- 
erally in living? These are questions which must 
be answered in the affirmative, and to the satisfac- 
tion, not of a few, merely, but of the majority of 
those to be affected. 

To do honor to Mr. Taylor and worthily to carry 
forward his work, those who are his disciples and 
those who may become such should recognize that 
they have in the solution of these questions a call 
upon them for patient effort no less exacting and 
severe than that to which Taylor subjected himself 
when pursuing the law of cutting of steel. Every 
step in the installation and the working out of scien- 
tific management calls for such cooperation by 
representatives of labor. The obstacles to securing 
it are great. Twenty-five years may be required to 
remove them fully. But whatever the time required 
to fully convince organized labor, it must be given, 
if our work is to be well done. The consent and the 



76 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

cooperation of the worker so represented must be 
secured. In no other way can we attain in full 
measure the increase of productivity upon which 
our well-being so largely depends. In no other way 
can we secure that joy in work without which in- 
crease of productivity will not bring greater happi- 
ness. In no other way can we attain that freedom 
and development of the worker without which even 
his greater happiness would not promote the general 
welfare. Let us work unremittingly in the spirit of 
Taylor to solve the problem he left unsolved. In 
the solution of that problem — which in a true 
sense is the labor problem — the greatest honor 
will be done to his memory and the greatest service 
to mankind. 



BY JAMES M. DODGE 

IN life he was ready at all times to explain and 
to defend the ideals and inspiration he be- 
queathed to us, gathered from that great inex- 
haustible source of inspiration, the wisdom of the 
universe, and in these he was fearless, untiring, just, 
and considerate. To those seeking knowledge he 
was kind and fraternal; to those asking for under- 
standing and opportunity he was generous and 
sympathetic; to those upon whom he bestowed his 
affection and friendship he was all that a man could 
be. No one having talked with him or seriously 
having inquired into his work could possibly have 
had the slightest doubt of his honesty and earnest- 
ness. The greatness of the legacy he left us is 
attested by its expanding development and augmen- 
tation in value. He gave it to us freely, without 
restricting clauses or perplexing codicils. The wills 
of men inscribed on parchment may be broken and 
the fancied hopes of the testator frustrated through 
legal quibble based upon trifling errors; but the in- 
tellectual will of Dr. Frederick Winslow Taylor, 
devising to all mankind the results of his lifework, 
can never be broken, because he has inscribed him- 
self upon earnest, thankful, and affectionate hearts 
by his priceless bequests to all of us. Thus we may 
have no hesitation in saying, take him for all in all, 
"we shall not look upon his like again. ,, 



ADDRESSES 

AT MR. TAYLOR'S HOME, " BOXLY," 

CHESTNUT HILL, PHILADELPHIA, 

PA., OCTOBER 23, 191 5 



BY ADMIRAL CHAUNCEY F. GOODRICH 

IT would be sheer presumption on the part of a 
plain sailor to add to the glowing eulogies pro- 
nounced last night on the character and achieve- 
ments of Mr. Taylor by men whose knowledge of 
their subjects and intimate relations with him are 
only rivaled by the eloquence of their tributes. 

Bear with me for a few moments and pardon, I 
pray you, the necessarily personal nature of my 
remarks while I touch briefly upon certain of 
Mr. Taylor's services to the National Government, 
some of which are known to but few individuals, 
hardly a dozen in all. 

Although I had met him in 1885, it was not until 
1889 that I became closely connected with him 
under the circumstances referred to by Mr. Thomp- 
son last evening. Out of this association grew a 
friendship only terminated by Mr. Taylor's death. 

I venture to call it intimate, although it is quite 
possible that, through pride, I use too strong a 
term. At least it gave me the courage to go to him 
for help when there fell to my lot to discharge as 
difficult and vexatious a duty as can well be ima- 
gined. Yet this duty was of my own seeking. Why? 
You may well ask. 

The answer is that it involved a great work and 
countless knotty problems which to do and to solve 
offered an opportunity to benefit the Navy, to which 



82 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

I have devoted practically all of my life and surely 
all of my best thought and most earnest endeavor. 

Huge as were the obstacles in the path, I felt con- 
fident that with Mr. Taylor's wise counsel and vast 
experience at my disposition a start at least might 
be made. 

In 1907 I was sent to the New York Navy Yard 
as Commandant, to find an industrial situation which 
beggars description. Within the yard walls were no 
less than five separate, distinct, unrelated plants, each 
seeking to be wholly sufficient in itself. Each 
plant was subject to orders from one of the divisions 
of the Navy Department known as "Bureaux" — - 
which avoided as far as possible even calling upon 
another Bureau's plant for assistance. When I 
say that there were five blacksmith shops, five car- 
penter shops, five pattern shops, five sets of machine 
shops, etc., and that in substantially every case one 
shop could do all the work of the yard, I shall have 
given you a glimpse at the situation. Here was a 
chance to effect enormous economies through the 
obvious course of consolidating all work of one 
kind under one roof and suppressing plants not 
actually needed. 

Naturally I turned to Mr. Taylor for advice — 
freely given. And I may say here that I never ven- 
tured to suggest to the Navy Department any change 
or reform until the whole matter was threshed out 
between him and me. 

It was some time before the first move was made, 
because I wished first to acquaint myself thoroughly 
with the conditions and not — so to speak — go off 
at halfcock. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 83 

At once I discovered that the time I needed for 
personal investigation was denied me by the absurd 
regulation which required all official correspondence 
to pass through my hands. Even the heads of yard 
departments were forbidden to communicate di- 
rectly with each other. Soon after assuming com- 
mand of the yard I read a letter somewhat to this 
effect: "For the information of the Equipment 
Officer the Naval Constructor reports that steam 
launch #269 is ready to receive its wheel ropes." 

You see the Naval Constructor could build the 
launch, but the moving of its wheel ropes belonged to 
another department. 

I called in my chief clerk and asked why in thun- 
der the Naval Constructor was bothering me with 
such piffle, "why did he not notify the Equipment 
Officer direct?" "It's against the regulation of the 
Navy and of the yard, sir," and such was the fact. 

So I came over to Boxly, told Mr. Taylor of this 
preposterous, inconceivable weaving of red tape, and 
asked him how I could cut it. He replied that the 
head of an industrial establishment should never 
even see the trivial or routine things — that noth- 
ing but the unusual and exceptional should meet 
his eyes — or questions of extreme importance, etc. 

After more talk and after receiving invaluable 
hints, back I went to New York and issued an order 
that "as an experiment" all subordinates under my 
command should communicate directly with each 
other on matters having my approval, but that they 
were forbidden to initiate new subjects without my 
knowledge and consent. The effect on my labors 
was instantaneous and immense. The experiment 



84 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

proved a great success, and when reported to the 
Navy Department its methods were adopted for the 
entire service. 

It thus came to pass that from having to sign my 
name from three hundred to eight hundred times a 
day on wholly perfunctory indorsements, chiefly 
"Respectfully forwarded," about forty times were 
found to suffice, and these signatures were to docu- 
ments that required my careful consideration. 

Thus were the chains that bound me to my desk 
shattered and opportunity afforded me to go around 
the yard and investigate conditions and methods. 

The nation was fortunate during this period in 
having at the Navy Department, first as Assistant 
and then as Secretary of the Navy, the Hon. Tru- 
man H. Newberry — a man of extensive business 
experience, clear mind, and exceptional courage. 
Mr. Newberry welcomed any and all suggestions for 
the improvement of affairs at the navy yards with 
which he was especially charged, and with singular 
fidelity to the public good he ignored the protests 
of the politicians, who loudly complained of the work 
of navy-yard reform, and he furnished that indis- 
pensable factor, departmental authority, without 
which nothing could be done. 

It is only fair to say that Mr. Newberry himself 
initiated a number of reforms — only one of which, 
however, was not preceded by a conference with 
me. This exception was due to a kind and generous 
consideration. He foresaw that it would occasion 
violent opposition and recrimination. These he 
sought to take to himself, thus sparing me from 
attack. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 85 

And I should also remark that he knew of my close 
relations with Mr. Taylor, having been assured by 
me that I would propose no scheme to him that had 
not been previously discussed between Mr. Taylor 
and myself. 

Out of the countless instances that might be 
quoted I will only mention one to illustrate the 
value of the latter's advice. 

One day there came to my office a printed sched- 
ule of the quantities of tool steel required for the 
ensuing year in but one department of the various 
navy yards. A certain yard alone, by the way, 
asked for over forty tons of this material. This will 
give you some idea of the total amount for all the 
yards. 

I noticed that each yard demanded a particular 
kind, mentioned by brand. Using fictitious names, 
let us say that Portsmouth wanted "Ajax," Boston 
"Acme," New York "Alpha," and so on down the 
line, each certifying that none other would suffice. 
At once I posted over to Boxly and explained the 
case. "You are paying for a brand — not for the 
steel," said Mr. Taylor. "Make your own speci- 
fications and open the bids to all manufacturers." 
To make a long story short, I suggested to the Navy 
Department that a "Tool Steel Board" should be 
formed to go into the question. My recommenda- 
tion was adopted. Through Mr. Taylor's help the 
Navy began buying its tool steel — not by brand 
but by its own specifications. The very first pur- 
chase of high speed tool steel brought the price down 
from #1.25 a pound to thirty odd cents; and the 
Commandant of the Washington yard, with its 



86 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

great gun shops, informed me that the new steel 
did one-third more work than the old. 

Mr. Taylor's independence is to be seen in this 
episode. He was summoned to Washington by one 
of Mr. Newberry's successors and asked to help 
improve matters. As he did not like or admire 
this official, he told the latter frankly that he was 
ready to do everything in his power to further the 
interests of the Navy, but that was his only motive, 
since he refused point blank to be considered as 
anxious to contribute in any way to the success of 
that gentleman's administration, something in which 
he had no interest whatsoever. 

I tell this story to illustrate Mr. Taylor's absolute 
integrity in both thought and deed. 

He would not permit any incorrect inference to 
be drawn from his willingness to serve his country. 
He could not lie, and he hated a liar with a hatred 
expressed in his own picturesque terms. 

To those fortunate individuals who won his 
esteem and confidence he gave freely from the rich 
treasury of a rare nature, exceptional ability, and, 
vast experience. 

Gladly do I acknowledge my own indebtedness 
in these respects. 

I regard it as a blessed privilege to be able to 
count myself among the close friends of Frederick 
Winslow Taylor. 



BY HAROLD VAN DU ZEE 

I HAVE been asked to talk a few moments on 
the very unusual and remarkable experiments 
on the cultivation of red fescue grass that Dr. 
Taylor has carried on here for several years, and in 
which it was my privilege and good fortune to assist. 

Some thirteen years ago Dr. Taylor purchased 
these grounds and at once, in his usual thorough 
way, began planning the home you now see, with 
every detail well adapted to the normal enjoyment 
of his family and friends. 

Among the things thought desirable was, of course, 
a putting green, on which to improve an already 
well established skill. Now the making of a putting 
green was not, at that time, thought to be a task of 
unusual scientific difficulty, so ordinarily well used 
methods of soiling and cultivation were used in the 
full expectation of a satisfactory green. 

The green could not be used the first season, — 
it was too tender. The second season it was still 
tender, and the third season it had failed badly in 
this severe climate. 

For several years Dr. Taylor worked with all his 
ingenuity to make the green a success. The in- 
jured places were cut out and refilled with a differ- 
ent soil, then seeded with much care. At another 
time, when the grass seemed below par, holes were 
punched with a steel dibble and filled with bone 



88 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

meal, topped with a germinating mixture. Other 
carefully thought out efforts were made to get good 
grass. All these repairs were carefully watched, but 
the watching did not help, and it became apparent 
that all the ingenuity was going into the grass and 
none to putting. 

You who have been intimate with Dr. Taylor will 
understand that when something was found that 
could not be done, that was the very thing that 
would be done and, moreover, every one would help 
do it. You all are familiar with the history of the 
slide rule. Here, when these grounds were pur- 
chased, was a large quantity of box hedge over a 
hundred years old, but in a very untidy and useless 
condition. If this could be transplanted into an 
orderly design for a garden, it would be a prize. 
Experts declared that no efforts to transplant would 
succeed; intimate friends made sport of the idea 
— money thrown away and all that. Yet eleven 
hundred feet of the box was transplanted without 
losing a bush, and you all have seen the result. 

It seemed that making a satisfactory putting 
green had become another of the things that could not 
be done. So with the failure of the efforts at repair 
began a work that grew to a long series of unusual 
and interesting experiments to make grass of fine 
quality grow in this unfavorable climate. There 
came a fixed determination to learn how to make a 
putting green that would satisfy the most exacting 
requirements of any golfer, and at any season. 
And Dr. Taylor began planning a series of tests for 
an investigation of this baffling subject. 

I shall never forget from how simple a basic 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 89 

statement has grown an unfinished work covering 
several years of unceasing effort. Dr. Taylor's 
first explanation to Mr. Bender and myself was that 
grass needed nourishment, root space, ventilation, 
and moisture. For the best meeting of these four 
requirements there have been carried out many 
hundreds of growing tests, and thousands of tests of 
materials, relating to their physical properties, 
source, cost, etc. It is certain that Mr. Sanford E. 
Thompson had a lively time in his laboratories dur- 
ing the early part of the work, and doubtless can 
measure his records by the cubic feet. My own 
files contain several pounds, and perhaps nearly a 
hundred plans, of tests and experiments. By this 
it is easy to see that even if the four basic require- 
ments appeared simple, there was great difficulty 
in meeting them. Nevertheless, there was to be 
no stopping till they were met in some way. 

A brief account of an earlier effort made by Dr. 
Taylor to have a putting green may serve to show 
what really great effort was put into the work here. 
In 1901, at his former home, a very rough piece of 
lawn was converted into a green in a somewhat novel 
way. It was thoroughly soaked until almost marshy; 
then the rough places were pounded down to a true 
surface with broad iron rammers. Thousands of 
small holes were made in this smooth surface by 
means of large nails fastened point down on the 
under side of a piece of board. The holes were then 
carefully filled with a germinating mixture, the 
green was watered regularly and fed twice a season. 
The result was the possession of a fair green, accord- 
ing to the requirements of that time. 



90 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

Here at Boxly a much better grade of green was 
thought necessary, and the lack of success in the first 
years of effort became a strong stimulus to find the 
reason of the failure and the requirements for success. 

Dr. Taylor never lost an opportunity to inquire 
into any interesting turf, wherever it might be 
found, and several times brought here samples of 
particularly fine turf from other parts of the coun- 
try, replanted them here, and watched their progress 
and noted the interested results. They were mostly 
negative, owing to the severe climate. It was after- 
wards determined that the fescue, a most desirable 
grass, was best suited to a cool climate and would 
not thrive as some of the other grasses in this par- 
ticularly hot and often humid atmosphere. This 
conclusion was accepted only after a long series of 
tests in great variety. 

The very fact that the red fescue was a difficult 
grass made it all the more interesting to find out 
how to grow it successfully, hence the perseverance. 
Dr. Taylor's discussion of his results and conclusions 
have been published in the American Golfer. So I 
shall give only an account of what was done. 

In 1909 forty-two germinating experiments were 
started to discover the best way to germinate seeds 
and to sustain the early growth of the grass. In 
planning the tests each test had one condition of 
soil different from any other, and records were kept of 
the entire soil construction and of the progress of the 
growth. By the term "soil construction" is meant 
the physical composition, the kinds and proportions 
of materials, the thickness and depth of the different 
layers, etc. 



FREDERICK WIN SLOW TAYLOR 91 

Dr. Taylor considered that the ordinary term 
"soil" could mean anything from a rich swamp 
muck to a barren hillside surface, and therefore 
was not a precise term in any sense. For the same 
reason it was decided that no soil in the ordinary 
sense could be used, because it could not be repro- 
duced readily at any time or place, and unless a 
successful soil could be exactly reproduced success- 
ful results could not be duplicated. A full appre- 
ciation of these facts led to the construction of soil 
with standard materials that were to be obtained 
anywhere with fair assurance of uniform quality, 
making possible indefinite duplication. 

This consideration led to prolonged efforts to find 
materials that would be uniform and could be 
easily obtained in indefinite or unlimited quantity. 
Many of the materials used in the tests were found 
only after long and persistent hunting, and were 
either not available at first or not known. Among 
these were bar sand, Jersey peat, cow manure, 
cracked bone, sands from New England, leaf mold 
from the local woods, swamp muck, many sizes of 
gravel, and fine stone. Every material had to be 
tested to show its physical characteristics, much 
in the way sand is tested for use in concrete or filtra- 
tion work. Knowledge of the physical qualities 
was used to determine the amount and position of 
each material in the solid composition. 

One interesting quality of the different materials 
was the power of lifting water from a free supply 
at the bottom to considerable heights by capillary 
attraction. The difference in height came from a 
difference in the size and shape of particles of the 



92 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

materials, mostly sand, and the proportion of the 
different sizes in the material. Some sands would 
lift the water but little more than an inch, others 
would lift over thirty inches. The high lifts took a 
long time, and, as might be expected, the amount 
at the top would be rather small. This water-lift- 
ing power was investigated carefully in hundreds 
of ways, as it was to be used in experimenting with an 
exactly controlled supply of water in an elaborate 
series of tests. 

It will now be seen that all of the four require- 
ments first mentioned are provided for. A novel 
plan for study of these four requirements was car- 
ried out in the fall of 1909. It consisted of a con- 
crete basin about fourteen feet square and sixteen 
inches deep, placed in one corner of the putting 
green. This was so arranged as to bring the finished 
work into the regular surface of the green. The 
basin was built with small reservoirs to hold water 
and with drain outlets at different heights to control 
the depth of the water in the soil. These outlets 
were visible. One half of the basin, separated from 
the other half by a concrete partition, was to hold 
the water at a high level, and the other half was to 
hold it at a low level. At a low place in the surface 
of each basin was provided an inlet by which the 
rain water or sprinkler water could reach the reser- 
voirs. In the soil construction means were pro- 
vided for drainage of surplus water. In this basin, 
although only thirteen by fourteen feet, were first 
placed test constructions for over a hundred differ- 
ent experiments. 

As the scheme of test construction has been the 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 93 

same throughout the entire work, it will be outlined 
here. 

It was considered that the growth of the grass 
from the seed to full maturity might be aided by 
suitable changes in soil for different depths of root- 
ing. Therefore the soils were constructed in layers 
of predetermined thickness and position, there being 
from four to perhaps a dozen layers of soils in a test. 
Some of the thicknesses would be J inch, and from 
that to twelve inches. Where a series of conditions 
were to be tested, some of these layers were laid in 
strips, with an upper strip crossing a lower one, 
on the gridiron plan. This simplified the construc- 
tion and helped to systematize the work. In this 
way one experiment would cover the area of one 
crossing of the strips, and these areas were, of neces- 
sity, small. It was unexpectedly interesting to 
note that the grass was very sensitive to the influence 
of the soil, so the lines of the divisions would keep 
clearly marked where soil changed from good to bad. 
But in many cases the quality of the different soils 
used varied so little that the grass was often of 
uniform quality over several areas. 

The materials used in the soil construction for this 
basin included crushed stone, gravel, broken glass, 
agricultural lime, four different forms of nourish- 
ment, and seventeen different sands. In arranging 
these, nothing was taken for granted. Positive 
knowledge of the fineness or size of soil particle, the 
voids, and water-lifting capacity was used in the 
selection, and the materials, either simple or mixed, 
were placed in positions that seemed interesting for 
each test. By this selection and arrangement were 



94 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

provided means by which the water could go up, 
and by which it could go down, freedom for the 
roots, places where they could go for moisture, and 
where they could go for nourishment. 

It was impossible to avoid the feeling that in 
carrying out these extensive experiments, Dr. Taylor 
had a sort of unconscious joy in putting shop methods 
to work. There was the precise classification of 
materials, precisely measured proportions, an ac- 
curate percentage of water to be applied to the dry 
materials. It seemed as if he constantly kept in 
mind a routing plan for the roots and for the water. 
There were provisions for the young roots, provisions 
for the middle-aged roots, and for the mature roots, 
and doubtless the roots were more happy than if 
left to themselves and enjoyed greater luxury than 
grass ever had before. 

And what was the return for all this on the part 
of the grass? Much of it failed to thrive through the 
hot weather, while some did fairly well. Many of 
the failures were satisfactory, because they elimi- 
nated certain combinations. Dr. Taylor often ex- 
pressed a wish that not all tests should prove satis- 
factory — there would be so little to learn. As a 
matter of fact Dr. Taylor derived much information, 
a part of which has been published, and discovered 
valuable combinations and some unusual materials, 
many of which were brought in by the carload. 

The germination of the seeds was fairly startling. 
In the early tests a quart of seed would be mixed 
with four quarts of prepared soil and the mixture 
would be spread over the surface in a layer | inch 
thick. This quantity of seed, if evenly spread 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 95 

without soil, would make a layer about .17 inch 
thick. Later discoveries led to the mixture of one 
quart of seed to 2500 quarts of the prepared soil, 
so the resulting germination would show about 6 
to 10 spears of grass to the square inch, and in the case 
of the creeping bent this seemed to give the best 
results. It is estimated that there are 300 million 
creeping bent seeds to the cubic foot and about 
11,700,000 to the quart, so it can be seen what a 
vast number was used in the early work in excess of 
what was needed. The early practice would take 
about 50 bushels to 1000 sq. feet and the latter would 
use but A 5 o quarts for the same area, or 15 quarts 
per acre. The seed men do not approve of the latter 
method. 

The different materials were rarely found easily 
and at low cost, and much hunting was done. When 
the desired material was found it was very likely to 
be in unsuitable shape for use; then came a hunt 
for the machinery to bring it into condition. Dr. 
Taylor was much pleased at the discovery of agri- 
cultural machinery for this work, and machines were 
finally found that served for mixing, for cutting, for 
grinding, and for shredding, at relatively low cost. 
Ten to twenty horse power gasoline engines are 
needed for this work. 

A somewhat different line of effort has been inter- 
esting. Dr. Taylor learned of some remarkable sod 
in Southampton, Conn., and we made an inspection 
trip in April, 191 1. The sod was so very attractive 
that Dr. Taylor purchased it as it was, a special 
strip containing nearly 2700 square feet of fine fescue. 
This sod was cultivated in an unusual way by Mr. 



96 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

Olcott, who at one time was editor of the Hart- 
ford Courant. The Olcott method was to expand 
a sample sod to occupy about seven times its or- 
dinary space by cutting it into blocks 2 inches 
square and planting these in square holes of a well 
worked soil spaced 7 inches from center to center. 
The bare soil between was kept entirely clear of 
weeds, and in two or perhaps three seasons a fine firm 
turf covered the entire area. On this experimental 
sod garden were grown probably the finest specimens 
of turf in the world, and the specimens used came 
from as far as China and Japan. The turf so ex- 
panded was expanded again in the same way, with 
a like result of fine turf. 

Dr. Taylor transported nearly fifteen hundred 
square feet of this turf in two carloads, and placed 
it on this forecourt and on the sod garden here. 
Much placed in the sod garden was expanded by 
the Olcott method to cover about seven times its 
original area, and the present turf in the corners of 
the forecourt was taken from this cultivation of his 
garden. The two carloads were brought from the 
Olcott farm in 191 1, at the end of the dry season, 
about the last of August, and the turf expanded from 
this was planted in the forecourt in September 1913, 
— a very successful two years' expansion. 

A striking incident occurred in this sod transac- 
tion that illustrates well Dr. Taylor's clearness and 
steadiness of mind. It was decided to take up the 
sod during the latter part of August, and when we 
went to inspect it during the summer, we found 
that it had turned white and looked really dead from 
the very severe and exceptional drought of that 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 97 

season. In spite of this Dr. Taylor never expressed 
the least hesitation or regret or fear of the result, 
and the operations for the transportation continued 
as though the turf were in the most flourishing con- 
dition. Most people with so expensive a project 
on hand would have hesitated to proceed, tried to 
reconsider, or attempted some strenuous and perhaps 
useless remedy. Not so with Dr. Taylor. Somehow 
he felt sure he was safe and right, and the result 
proved him right. This faculty of knowing things 
correctly is doubtless one of the secrets of his success 
in achievement. 



LETTER FROM WM. A. FANNON 

IT was on a bright Sunday morning in 1884, 
probably June, that I first met Mr. Frederick W. 
Taylor, of Germantown. He was then Chief 
Engineer of the Midvale Steel Co. at Nicetown and 
he wished to have Mr. Charles W. Shartle, now of 
Middletown, Ohio, and myself come into the Mid- 
vale employ and assist in working out his new system 
of management. If for no other reason, his proposi- 
tion, presented with force and enthusiasm, had us 
mightily stirred, so that we talked of nothing else 
on our way home. 

I had had personal experience with piece-work as 
a boy. And again, just prior to my meeting Mr. 
Taylor, my fellow workmen and I had had our rate 
cut as a reward for getting out a large production and 
showing others how it could be done. This rate- 
cutting evil was general at that time, however, and 
was due to setting the rate per diem on insufficient 
data. So with this well in mind as a concrete illus- 
tration of the ill-effect of the old piece-work or per 
diem system, Mr. Taylor's scientific method of 
getting data before establishing a rate per diem 
appealed to us. Added to this was his idea of not 
only one rate per diem, but several, which might be 
called accumulative rates. 1 His methods seemed 

1 [Differential rates, Ed.] 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 99 

to us an insurance against the employer's having 
any reason for cutting rates and also against the 
employee's earning a compensation out of all pro- 
portion to what the employer could afford to pay or 
inconsistent with the earnings of other men of equal 
or similar skill in the plant. And the confidence 
that must exist between men in business transactions 
which this careful rate setting engenders was also 
reflected in Mr. Taylor's personality and won us over 
to confidence in the practical working out of his 
proposition. 

So Mr. Shartle and I entered the employ of the 
Midvale Steel Co. on July I, 1884. Mr. Shartle 
was given (at his choice) the erection of new ma- 
chinery and repair work, commonly known as bench 
work; and I, the running of a slotting machine 
which was, besides doing miscellaneous work, cutting 
out test bars for the United States Government. 
On this machine I assisted in getting out data not 
only for making future per diem rates, but also 
facts from actual practice concerning cutting out 
test bars from ordnance steel. Mr. Taylor seemed 
to think that there was a future in selling ordnance 
to the government and was very desirous of getting 
such notations. My work was under a stop watch 
which was in constant possession of a man known 
in his official capacity as an observer. 

I continued with Midvale in this line of work 
until May 9th, 1887, or approximately three years. 
Prior to my leaving, Mr. Shartle had gone to his 
home in Middletown and had organized a company 
of his own. I followed and joined him in the business 
in June, 1887. 



IOO FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

During this period that I had been with Midvale, 
I had seen many interesting developments of Mr. 
Taylor's system. Prominent among them was the 
turning of steel axles for railroad service on Pullman 
and other cars. Prior to Mr. Taylor's starting his 
system for compensation for the turning of axles, 
men were paid $1.50 for ten hours' work and a day's 
work was considered approximately three axles. 
With his system of accumulative compensation and 
a rate based on scientific data, the men were earning 
about twice as much as they had earned before for 
the same number of hours of work, and were produc- 
ing from two to three times as much. Approximately 
the same results were brought about in the turning 
of tires for locomotives, Pullman, and other cars. 
The development of splicing and of keeping proper 
tension on leather belting was also forwarded to a 
very satisfactory degree. 

After I had been in Middletown, Ohio, for some 
years, my health failed me, so that I went to Colorado. 
I was there about six months; and while there I 
received a letter from Mr. Taylor stating that indi- 
cations pointed to considerable expansion in the 
Midvale Steel Co. and if I thought of coming back 
East at all, he would like me to return to that or- 
ganization. Later, during a visit to my brother in 
Philadelphia, I saw Mr. Taylor and I reentered 
their employ on February 11, 1889. During 
this latter period I again saw that Mr. Taylor was 
progressing with his system so much that it increased 
my confidence in him and his efforts and I decided 
to remain and tie up with the Midvale Steel Co. I 
became very much interested in all the progress 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR IOI 

that was being made in all the departments. It was 
about this time that I married. 

Among his achievements during this second period 
that I was with the Midvale Steel Co. was the design 
of a new steam hammer. It was a well known fact 
up to that time, that the design of all steam hammers 
had been along certain similar lines. This design 
was such that, the hammer being in a rigid frame, 
it would in time, through the jar of operation, crack 
and break up the frame of the hammer itself. There 
was also the need of a hammer capable of working 
forgings of a larger size than had hitherto been 
attempted. So, in order to build a more durable 
hammer, and one which would overcome this serious 
defect of the rigid frame, Mr. Taylor designed one 
which was unique in its plan and flexibility. It was 
similar to great jointed spider legs, and it had a 
stretch and recoil like a spiral spring. With the 
piston and head, this hammer weighed twenty-five 
tons; and, when the steam was let into the cylinder 
on top, it struck a blow of seventy-five tons. Al- 
though the hammer was not established when I left, 
my information was that it effected a tremendous 
saving in repairs and was a complete success. Sub- 
sequently, makers of ordnance substituted hydraulic 
presses for steam hammers, but the designing of this 
hammer was a bold piece of engineering and re- 
quired great courage. 

I understand that Mr. Taylor also designed some 
special tools for turning and machining large forg- 
ings which are unique and successful. 

During this latter period, the progress of the Mid- 
vale Steel Co. was such, especially in Mr. Taylor's 



102 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

department, that the then Secretary of the Navy, 
William C. Whitney, became interested in Mr. 
Taylor's unique and unconventional progress and 
asked Mr. Taylor to come to Washigton, D.C., 
for a conference. 

Some time prior to this conference, a Mr. Thilmany 
came over from Germany and succeeded in inter- 
esting Don M. Dickinson, then Postmaster in 
Detroit, in a new process invented by a German 
chemist, Professor Andrew Mitterlich, for the con- 
version of wood by-products into fiber suitable for the 
making of paper and other products such as shoe 
boxes and container boards. Mr. Thilmany had 
in mind principally the utilization of the slabs, 
edgings, sawdust, and bark that were being produced 
in the manufacture of lumber from saw logs. And 
indeed the accumulation was such that there were 
endless conveyors carrying this waste material into 
large burners, not only without getting any returns 
but at a certain cost for the maintenance of these 
burners. 

Michigan was a great lumber-producing state, and 
Mr. Dickinson was acquainted with a number of 
lumbermen who were aware of this tremendous 
waste and this process for the conversion of it. 
Through him they became interested to such an 
extent that they paid Mr. Thilmany a large sum of 
money for the patent rights for this process in 
America. Then they organized a company known 
as the Manufacturing Investment Co. of New York, 
having for some of its stockholders: Col. O. H. 
Payne of New York, William C. Whitney, Daniel 
Lamont, and Don M. Dickinson. At the time Mr. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR IO3 

Taylor was asked to the conference in Washington, 
they had already started to erect a plant in Madison, 
Maine, and in Appleton, Wisconsin, and Mr. Whitney 
was looking for a general manager. His duties were 
to be, — first to look after the welfare of these two 
mills, and, after these were properly organized and 
running, to erect mills in different parts of the country 
for the further utilization of this waste. 

Mr. Whitney, at the conference in Washington, 
D.C., offered Mr. Taylor a very much larger salary 
than he was getting at the Midvale Steel Co. After 
some deliberation and consultation with some of 
his relatives and friends, he decided to accept the 
position as general manager of the Manufacturing 
Investment Co. and signed a contract dated May 26, 
1890; and it was specified that, from that date until 
October 1, 1890, he should devote as much time as 
possible to the affairs of the company and, from 
October 1, 1890, until October 1, 1893, he was to 
devote the whole of his time to this work. He 
remained with the Manufacturing Investment Co. 
until June, 1893, which covered a period of about 
two and a half years. 

Mr. Taylor was anxious to have some of his old 
time friends in the organization and spoke to several 
of the employees of the Midvale Steel Co. in his 
department about coming with him, but did not 
urge them. He offered me the same opportunity 
and I made a trip to Alpena, Michigan, where this 
process was in actual operation in the Fletcher 
Paper Co. Mr. Fletcher was a lumberman and had 
started up a paper mill to use the sawmill by- 
products and turn them into paper. After the visit 



104 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

here, I returned and discussed going with the Manu- 
facturing Investment Co., but Mr. Taylor and I 
did not at first agree on salary. The possibilities 
seemed to be unlimited in this new business and 1 
learned from Mr. Taylor that there were many 
young men so eager to get into this business that they 
were working for a while without any compensation 
whatever. This was one of the arguments for com- 
bating my ideas of what salary I thought I should 
have to break up my home and enter into an entirely 
new business in a new country. My reply was 
that he might be able to get those young men but 
I was not in that class and I would have to have the 
salary that I stated or I did not feel that I should go 
with him; but, if he would pay me that salary, he 
would get the best that was in me. After a couple 
of weeks' time, he decided to accept my ideas as to 
salary and I decided to go with the new company 
and left the Midvale Steel Co. on the 8th of January, 
1 89 1. I remained with the Manufacturing Invest- 
ment Co. until it was reorganized in 1899 and 
changed hands. It is now known as the Interlake 
Pulp & Paper Co. In the reorganization, the 
Madison, Maine, mill, divorced from the Appleton 
Mill, was absorbed by the Great Northern Paper 
Co. The Interlake continued to operate and is 
operating at this time with the writer as Vice- 
President and Manager. 

During Mr. Taylor's incumbency as general man- 
ager, he established some features of his new system, 
although this industry did not afford the same op- 
portunity in detail for the development of the new 
system which other lines of manufacturing offered. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR IO5 

These features were in vogue for many years, lasting 
until changing conditions eliminated them. 

Mr. Taylor had hardly taken hold and gotten 
the organization permanently started before we 
discovered that the enterprise was to be very largely 
a disappointment. First, the price paid for the 
patents was a large one in view of the fact that they 
did not prove to be as much a controlling factor 
as had been anticipated. When the company bought 
these patents, they believed that all other companies 
wishing to cook wood in a digester would have to 
pay the Manufacturing Investment Co. a royalty 
for the use of the lining to the digester, which was 
considered the last word in the way of digester linings 
and the final victory over the most hazardous part 
of the sulphite business. 1 Not long afterward other 
sulphite mills were built and operated by other 
people who were not obliged to pay the Manu- 
facturing Investment Co. royalties, and a process 
was established and became a commercial success 
although the fiber was not as good as that made by 
the Mitterlich process. In fact an amusing suit 
was begun about twenty years later by a Mr. Russell 
of New England against the Manufacturing Invest- 
ment Co. for an infringement on the New England 
company's patents for a lining of the digester. The 
suit was, however, unsuccessful. 

1 As a sample of what this problem of linings was, records 
indicate that in 1863 Benjamin Tilgeman, a Philadelphia 
chemist, took out letters patent for his sulphite process but 
found the problem of getting a suitable digester so difficult that 
he gave it up as a bad job after spending $20,000 in trying to 
overcome this one difficulty. 



106 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

The next unfortunate experience was that, in the 
Company's anxiety to get these mills started, they 
did not take sufficient time to select the best loca- 
tions, for there were other water powers that they 
might have secured which were far better than the 
ones they did secure and were equally well, if not 
better, located for the supply of forest products. 

An additional unfortunate thing occurred. In 
their desire to get these mills going, there was a 
competitive spirit started between Admiral Good- 
rich and Admiral Evans as to who would get his 
mill first producing fiber. The Appleton Mill, 
operated by Admiral Evans, succeeded in making 
the first fiber, which was on March 15, 1891; but, 
in the haste to get these mills going, there were some 
unfortunate mistakes made in the designing of the 
mills by the architect or engineers, some of which 
were beyond the control of Mr. Taylor, as they were 
made before he took charge. Yet in this same rush 
Mr. Taylor also made some mistakes. In fact all 
seemed to act in an impulsive way and to contribute 
some to the making of mistakes, due largely to their 
anxiety to get started and to inexperience as to 
what was needed in this new process. All these 
things helped to make the proposition a disap- 
pointment. 

Then, on top of all, they just got started right 
when the panic of 1893 showed in a most forcible 
way that the profits that had been promised by the 
original promoters and accepted as a fact by the 
organizers of the Manufacturing Investment Co. 
were far below what was anticipated. Indeed, it 
was difficult to make a new dollar from an old one. 



FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR IO7 

So great was the disappointment to Mr. Taylor 
that I think it affected his health. He had gone 
far enough into this business to find that it did not 
appeal to him and so he rendered his last service 
to the company in June, 1893, and then went into the 
real beginning of the development of scientific 
management and that of high-speed steel. 

As I look back upon my experience with Mr. 
Taylor the two times I was associated with him 
in the steel works and later in the Manufacturing 
Investment Co., the traits that stand out most 
prominently to my mind are: his true democracy, 
his exceeding cleverness, his many-sidedness, his 
tremendous loyalty to his friends, and his strong 
purpose and convictions. You always felt that you 
knew where he stood on any proposition in which 
he was interested. Indeed I often thought he would 
have made more rapid progress if he had been more 
tactful and not so willing to combat in an intense 
way anybody that saw fit to oppose him or disagree 
with his various ideas. He seemed to feel that "He 
that is not with me is against me." 

Many people did not like him because his ideas 
were at least twenty-five years ahead of his time; 
but the fact that they could not see his purpose and 
ultimate ends did not make those ends impossible, 
although they thought so. 

Sometimes, when Mr. Shartle or I discussed a prop- 
osition with him, he would act as if we had no right 
to oppose him or argue the matter. At the time this 
seemed to us rather harsh, and irritated us; but in 
the light of what has transpired in the last twenty- 
five years, it does not look quite so bad. I think he 



108 FREDERICK WINSLOW TAYLOR 

saw farther ahead than we did, and it was not egotism 
that made him take that apparently arbitrary posi- 
tion, but the fact that he had already gone over the 
ground thoroughly in advance and had thought it 
out and come to a conclusion by which he was will- 
ing to stand. He did not see any use in wasting 
time by going over the same ground repeatedly. A 
problem once solved was not to be rehearsed again 
and again. We were to accept the result he had 
worked out and knew was right, and go on from 
where he left off. 1 never saw a man who had a 
greater courage of his convictions than Mr. Taylor, 
or one who was more willing to admit his mistakes 
and not blame others for them. 

Another thing which impressed us was his love 
for work, regardless of the fact that he was not 
obliged to, if we properly understood his financial 
condition. Yet his work was of the most strenuous 
kind. He even went into recreation in a most 
strenuous way. His work, under the new Taylor 
System, seemed to be of the most contradictory 
character. He was working hard and quarreling 
with many people to establish a unique system the 
aim of which was to make a permanent peace be- 
tween employer and employee, so that they would 
both get a square deal. 

In addition to the above characteristics one, which 
impressed us by no means the least, was the purity 
of his life. 



RESOLUTION 

ADOPTED BY THE SOCIETY TO 

PROMOTE THE SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT 

AT ITS MEETING IN PHILADELPHIA, PA., 

OCTOBER 23, 1 91 5 



Whereas, the Society to Promote the Science of 
Management, in pursuance of its plan to observe a 
fitting memorial to the life and work of its distin- 
guished leader, the late Frederick Winslow Taylor, 
has been favored with the gracious hospitality of his 
devoted helpmate and companion Mrs. Louisa 
Marie Spooner Taylor; and 

Whereas, the cooperation of Mrs. Taylor in this 
memorial has been an important and essential con- 
tribution to its proper observance; be it 

Resolved, that the Society to Promote the Science 
of Management hereby expresses its hearty appre- 
ciation of the part taken by Mrs. Taylor in our 
joint rendering of due honor to the memory of her 
revered husband; and be it 

Resolved, that this Society hereby records its con- 
fident hope that the adherance to Mr. Taylors 
ideals and the helpfulness in their realization mani- 
fested by Mrs. Taylor during his lifetime, through 
the dark hours of its close, and to the present dedi- 
cation of this Society to a continuation of that 
work, will continue with unabated interest and en- 
thusiasm, and further be it 

Resolved, that these resolutions be spread upon 
the permanent records of this Society, and that a 
copy hereof be duly engrossed and presented to 
Mrs. Taylor. 



BENEDICTION 

PRONOUNCED BY THE REVEREND LANGDON 

C. STEWARDSON AT MR. TAYLOR'S GRAVE, 

WEST LAUREL HILL CEMETERY, 

PHILADELPHIA, PA., 

OCTOBER, 23, 191 s 



21 Benediction 

Wit are gatbcrco bete In tbe presence of <£oD 
anD at tbe gratie of jFreDertck (Kainsloto Ca^lor 
tbat toe map remember tfce DeaD anD carrp atoap 
toitb U0 an inspiration for tbe liuing. €t)t spirit 
of our frienD is upon us noto : tf>e spirit of fear- 
less research anD raDical reform anD lotie of 
bumankinD. 

iDc ItoeD tbat be migbt break untroDDen patbs 
of trutb anD labor* it)e coulfc not sit content amiD 
tbe errors of inDustrial faith or tbe sins of Its 
establisbeD practice* iOe sougbt a principle tobicb 
sbouID point eacb toorker to bis appropriate task 
anD gitic bim opportunity to bappilp fulfil it. Ii)e 
maDe incessant toar on tuaste, unfitness, incom* 
petence, injustice* J^is effort toas, bp reaDjust* 
ment in tbe cbaos of life's jumbleD parts, to set 
tbings rigbt : to bring eacb man to bi$ otun : anD 
so acbietie efficient toil anD social toelfare. ©e 
knelt) tbat to be unprobuctitie toas to DefrauD tbe 
community anD to beggar tbe inDitiiDual. ibence 
bis lifelong purpose toas to .static men's souls, to 
bring tbem into possession of tbemselties anD 
tbus assist tbem, eacb in bis oton place anD 
accorDing to tbe bonest measure of bi0 abilitp, to 
sertie tbeir fellotos anD to glorifp tbeir ®oD. 

Co bonor bte memorp is to continue bte toork. 
Co reference bis: spirit is to spreaD it abroaD. 
Co make tbis ceremonp anD occasion fruitful is 
to Ieatie tbte grounD to-Dap in tbt bigb resoltie 
tbat toe too tuill unDertake to saue men's souls, 
to bring tbem into possession of tbemselties anD 
tbus assist tbem, eacb in bfe otun place anD 
accorDing to tbe bonest measure of W abilitp, to 
sertie tbeir fellotos anD to glorify tbeir <5oD. 

Opon tbi0 mission map OBoD's blessing rest. 

9men. 



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